Lengthy Scheduled Refresh with delayed start

[PGee]

Hello,

I've been experiencing this scheduled refresh issue for the reports published using Power BI Pro.  I have some reports created in group workspace using personal gateway. I have scheduled the report for 9am, then :

1. First of all, the scheduled refresh starts only after about 3 -4 minutes (like 9:04 am)

2. Secondly, it takes about 16-18 minutes long to complete the refresh,

When I do the on-demand refresh, it happens instantly,

Any tips on why this is happening and how to fix it. TIA.

[v-tangjie-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @PGee ,

Power BI Refresh is different based on connection mode and the performance is based on Capcacity.

You may learn more about refresh from this offical blog: Data refresh in Power BI.

Free and Pro user will refresh their reports in shared capacity, as we know shared capacity will has limitation in refresh rate, stroage mode and so on.

If we need better peformance in refresh like larger refresh rate or bigger stroage mode, we need to purchase Premium.

You can find the comparation between Pro and Premium in this link: Explore Power BI plans

You could try the following ways to improve :

1.Check Refresh summary and mertic usage app to allocate reasonable refresh time.
2. Optimize the model (remove useless fields), incremental refresh.
3. Look at the workload settings in the settings, turn down the larger resources, and turn up the resource allocation of the dataset.

4.Download the Capacity Metrics app and check it to find which lack of resources causes poor capacity performance. For reference: Monitor Premium capacities with the app

To learn more details ,you  also could read the following articles:

10 Best practice tips to improve your Tabular Model performance

HOW TO IMPROVE POWER BI PERFORMANCE - PART I
HOW TO IMPROVE POWER BI PERFORMANCE - PART II
HOW TO IMPROVE POWER BI PERFORMANCE - PART III

Best Regards,

Neeko Tang

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[GilbertQ]

Hi @PGee 

Because you are using a shared service it has to wait for resources to become available before it can refresh. That is why over time you will see the refresh happening close to the hour, but not always at the hour.

Also the refresh can take longer, because once again it has to use the shared compute (memory and CPU) resources. Because this is shared it will take a bit longer to refresh.

If you want better performance you would need to look at Power BI Premium which has dedicated memory and CPU.