Forum Discussion
Large datasets
- 8 months ago
Hi ganaa0810,
The main challenge isn't the size of your PBIX file on desktop, but rather the full refresh that occurs after every model change in the Power BI Service. Even though your PBIX is only 230 MB locally, publishing a model with incremental refresh enabled causes the Service to rebuild the entire dataset once, including all historical data. This process can exceed Pro capacity limits or result in connection timeouts since the Service tries to load two years of data at once. This is expected behavior for Pro: after any model change, incremental refresh can't reuse previous partitions and must reprocess everything. Premium/PPU offers more capacity, faster refreshes, and advanced features like loading data without reprocessing all history. Your approach is correct, but your model has reached a size where Pro struggles during the initial full refresh. On Power BI Pro, you can temporarily reduce the refresh window (such as loading only 6 months), publish, and then expand the window. For a more stable solution, consider moving to PPU or Premium for better handling of large historical data loads.
Thank you.
Hey ganaa0810 ,
how large is the semantic model when you open Power BI Desktop?
Because you mentioned that you are on Power BI Pro, the model cannot exceed 1 GB, whether using incremental refresh or a full refresh.
Open the PBIX using Power BI Desktop, and check the size using DAX Studio, use the Vertipaq Analyzer inside DAX Studio:
The sum of the column size across all tables of the semantic model must not be larger 1GB (keep in mind that size is measured in Byte )
Here you can download DAX Studio: https://daxstudio.org/downloads/
Use the portable version in case you are not allowed to install anything on your machine.
You will also find Documentation on the site that will get you started.
Regards,
Tom