Forum Discussion
Power BI Pro vs Fabric Capacity - Performance
VickyDev18 Not sure that can be answered fully. Pro is shared capacity and not dedicated capacity. So, think of Pro capacity as probably the largest Fabric capacity there is, but it is shared between many tenants/organizations. So, if traffic is light, you will have extremely good performance but if for some reason traffic is exceptionally heavy, you will have bad performance. Versus, with Fabric, nobody else gets to use your capacity except you.
In general I have seen most organizations with E5 licenses having extremely little interest in Fabric because they would just end up paying for the same thing twice essentially. For example, there is no real benefit for you in going to an F64+ license is you have an E5 and want the security features. With the F64+ not everyone would need a Pro license, but it already comes along "for free" with an E5 so...
VickyDev18 Not sure that can be answered fully. Pro is shared capacity and not dedicated capacity. So, think of Pro capacity as probably the largest Fabric capacity there is, but it is shared between many tenants/organizations. So, if traffic is light, you will have extremely good performance but if for some reason traffic is exceptionally heavy, you will have bad performance. Versus, with Fabric, nobody else gets to use your capacity except you.
In general I have seen most organizations with E5 licenses having extremely little interest in Fabric because they would just end up paying for the same thing twice essentially. For example, there is no real benefit for you in going to an F64+ license is you have an E5 and want the security features. With the F64+ not everyone would need a Pro license, but it already comes along "for free" with an E5 so...
Thanks Greg_Deckler . I assume Microsoft also keep tabs on the capacity for Pro and adjusts as needed to avoid any major capacity issues for it's Pro users so in most cases even though it's a shared capacity it should work fine.
Like you stated, if we already have E5 then Fabric may not really be needed.
Having said that, Fabric does provide some developer friendly features so I think a Hybrid approach i.e. leverage Fabric for Lakehouse, Warehouse, XMLA endpoint etc for development purposes and deploy model/report to Pro workspace for end users may work out fine.
Only other key limitation I can think of in Pro is the limit of 8 refreshes per day. I'd take that over capacity issues though so for now Hybrid is perhaps what we will go with.