Power BI Premium Capacity Architecture

[Won]

We currently have one Power BI Premium capacity that has multiple workspaces per environment (Dev, Test, and Production). Recently, we conducted load testing on one of our new reports in the Test workspace, and this caused our Production users to experience degraded performance. To avoid such issues and prevent environments from sharing resources within the same capacity, we are considering provisioning an additional capacity specifically for Development & Load testing purposes.

I tried searching on Google to see if there are any examples or documentation of others implementing this strategy, but I wasn't able to find anything relevant. Other than the cost implications, do you have any concerns with this approach? Thanks!

[Won]

Thank you @Greg_Deckler for the response; I wasn't aware of that. By the way, do you see any problems about having separate Capacities for Development and Production? The idea is to isolate the environments so that Production users are not affected by potential performance degradation from heavy loads or testing activities during development phases. I haven't been able to find any use cases or documentation on this practice, and I'm wondering if it might not be the right approach. Could you share your thoughts? Thanks!

[bdymit]

@Won Our organization is asking the exact same question. Did you find a way to have multiple capacities, even with just one SKU? We are on P1 with 8 vcores and can't see any way to allocate 7 into the "development" and 1 to "consumption", or 6 and 2, etc.

[Greg_Deckler]

@Won It's always the right approach to isolate dev/test environments from production. Especially if you are doing load testing. Then it's absolutely the right approach. Power BI doesn't change any of the fundamentals of good IT practices!

[Won]

Great, thank for confirming, @Greg_Deckler. Appreciated your insights! 

Best,

Won

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

@Won Biggest concern is that Premium capacity is going away and you will not be able to purchase it any longer. You will likely want to use a Fabric F-64 capacity that you can shut-off when not load testing. That way it won't cost you anything but storage when turned off.