Tag: Fabric

Azure, Fabric Administrator, Fabric Capacity, Logic Apps, Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Fabric: Automating Fabric Capacity Scaling with Azure Logic Apps


UPDATE 16 Sep 2024

I have published a new blog explaining how to resolve the issue of Capacity Admins disappering. Check it out here.

NOTE

This method uses the Create or Update a Resource action. This action uses PUT method which messes up with capacity admin settings on the Fabric Admin portal. This is stated by Kevin and later by Wiroj in the comments section. The REST API to scale or down the Fabric Capacity is as follows:

patch https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/resourceGroups/{resourceGroup}/providers/Microsoft.Fabric/capacities/{capacityName}?api-version=2023-11-01

If you run the preceding API using PATCH method, you do not need to have your capacity running. In other words, you can run the API even when the capacity is paused. I will post a new blog explaining this but for now, I hope the information provided here is helpful.

Read more in my comment and Michael’s about this topic.

In a previous post I explained how to manage the capacity costs of a Fabric F capacity (under Pay-As-You-Go pricing model) using Logic Apps to Suspend and Resume it.

A customer who read my previous blog asked me “Can we use a similar method to scale up and down before and after specific workloads?”. This blog post is to answer exactly that.

I want to make some important points clear first and before we dig deeper into the solution:

  • The method described in this post works with Fabric F SKUs under Pay-As-You-Go pricing model.
  • If you have a Power BI Premium capacity, then this method is not valid for your case. But you might be interested in the autoscale option for Power BI Premium capacities.
  • Depending on your current workload, scaling down may not work due to resource unavailability.
  • Depending on your workload, this method may take a while to go through.
  • You need to be either a Capacity Admin or a Fabric Admin to successfully implement this method.
  • This method works based on user authentication, however, you may want to use Service Principal or Manage Identity which require more effort but could be a more desirable method in many scenarios.
  • This post explains a very basic scenario, you’re welcome to scale it to your specific needs.
  • You can consider this post as a continuation of the previous post. So if you are unsure you correctly understand what this blog is trying to explain, then I suggest you read my previous post first where I explain the Logic Apps implementation in more detail.

The Problem

I have an F Fabric capacity and I want to upscale it to an upper tier between the pick-time from 8 AM to 12 PM local time, then downscale it to its original tier.

The Solution

There are many ways to do this including using Azure Resource Manager APIs, Manage Azure Resources in PowerShell, or using Azure Resource Manager connector that can be used on Azure Logic Apps, Power Automate Premium, and Power Apps Premium. This post explores the use of Azure Resource Manager connectors in Azure Logic Apps. With that, let’s begin.

  1. On Azure Portal, search for Logic apps
  2. Select the Logic Apps service
Select Azure Logic Apps on Azure Portal
Select Azure Logic Apps on the Azure Portal
  1. Click the Add button
  2. Pick a Subscription from the list
  3. Pick a Resource Group from the list or create a new one
  4. Enter the Logic App name
  5. Select the Region from the list
  6. Select No if you do not require to Enable log analytics
  7. Select Consumption from the Plan type
  8. Click the Review + create button
Create new Logic Apps service on Azure Portal
Create new Logic Apps service on Azure Portal
  1. Click the Create button
Confirm creating new Logic Apps service
Confirm creating new Logic Apps service
Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric: Automating Fabric Capacity Scaling with Azure Logic Apps” →
Business Intelligence - BI, Fabric Administrator, Fabric Capacity, Good Practices, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service

Microsoft Fabric: Overcome Reaching the Maximum Number of Fabric Trial Capacities

Microsoft Fabric Overcome Reaching the Maximum Number of Fabric Trial Capacities

If you are evaluating Microsoft Fabric and do not currently own a Premium Capacity, chances are you’re using Microsoft Fabric Trial Capacities. All Power BI users within an organisation or specific security groups given the rights can opt into Fabric Trial Capacities. Therefore, you may already have several Trial Fabric Capacities in your tenant. Your Fabric Administrators can specifically control who can opt into the Fabric Trial capacities within the Fabric Admin Portal, on the Help and support settings section, and enabling the Users can try Microsoft Fabric paid features setting as shown in the following image:

Enable Users can try Microsoft Fabric paid features for specific security groups via Fabric Admin Portal
Enable Users can try Microsoft Fabric paid features for specific security groups via Fabric Admin Portal

The authorised users can then opt into Fabric Trial by following this process:

  1. Click the Account Manager on the top right corner of the page
  2. Click the Start trial button
  3. Click the Start trial button again
  4. Provide the required details
  5. Click the Extend my free trial button

The following image shows the preceding steps:

Start Fabric Free Trial
Start Fabric Free Trial

As you see, opting into Fabric Trial is simple, unless it isn’t!

There are cases where authorised users cannot start their Fabric Trial because their tenant has already exceeded the limit of available trial capacities. In that case, the users get the following message:

Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric: Overcome Reaching the Maximum Number of Fabric Trial Capacities” →
Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service

Microsoft Fabric: Generating Reports with Copilot

Microsoft Fabric Generating Reports with Copilot on Fabric

In Nov 2023, Microsoft announced Microsoft Fabric’s general availability and Public Preview of Copilot in Microsoft Fabric. In a previous post, I explained what Copilot means to Power BI developers, which is valid for other Fabric developers such as data engineers and data scientists as Copilot for Fabric helps with those experiences as well. But the main focus of this blog post is to discuss the requirements, how to enable Copilot, and how to use it from a Power BI development point of view. So, this blog will not discuss other aspects of Copilot in Microsoft Fabric. With that, let’s begin.

Requirements

Right off the bat, Copilot is only available on Power BI Premium capacities or their equivalent Fabric capacities. So, NO it is NOT available on Power BI Pro or Premium Per User or Power BI Embedded Analytics. So the Power BI items you want to use Copilot on must be in a Workspace assigned to a Power BI Premium P1 or Microsoft Fabric F64 capacities or higher.

You also need to have a Contributor role on the premium workspace.

To use Copilot, your Microsoft Fabric Administrator must enable it from the Fabric Admin Portal. This setting is not available in all regions yet, but Microsoft is gradually rolling it out to more regions.

Useful links:

Enabling Copilot on Fabric Admin Portal

As mentioned before, your Fabric Administrator must enable Copilot features within the Admin Portal. Follow these steps to enable Copilot on your tenant after logging into Microsoft Fabric:

  1. Click Settings (the gear icon on the top right of the page)
  2. Click Admin portal
  3. Ensure that the Tenant setting tab is selected
  4. Scroll all the way down to the Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service (preview)​ section

Note

You can also use the search box and search for OpenAI to find the Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service (preview)​ section.

  1. Enable the Users can use a preview of Copilot and other features powered by Azure OpenAI
  2. Click the Apply button
  3. Enable the ​​​Data sent to Azure OpenAI can be processed outside your tenant’s geographic region, compliance boundary, or national cloud instance
  4. Click the Apply button again

That is it. You enabled the Copilot capabilities on your tenant.

The following image shows the preceding steps:

Enabling Copilot for Power BI in Fabric Service Admin Portal
Enabling Copilot in Fabric Admin Portal
Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric: Generating Reports with Copilot” →
Azure, Fabric Administrator, Fabric Capacity, Logic Apps, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Power BI Premium Capacity, Power BI Service

Microsoft Fabric: Capacity Cost Management Part 2, Automate Pause/Resume Capacity with Azure Logic Apps

Automate Pause Resume Suspend Fabric Capacity with Azure Logic Apps

In the previous blog post, I explained Microsoft Fabric capacities, shedding light on diverse capacity options and how they influence data projects. We delved into Capacity Units (CUs), pricing nuances, and practical cost control methods, including manually scaling and pausing Fabric capacity. Now, we’re taking the next step in our Microsoft Fabric journey by exploring the possibility of automating the pause and resume process. In this blog post, we’ll unlock the secrets to seamlessly managing your Fabric Capacity with automation that helps us save time and resources while optimising the usage of data and analytics workloads.

Right off the bat, this is a rather long blog, so I added a bonus section at the end for those who are reading from the beginning to the end. With that, let’s dive in!

The Problem

As we have learned in the previous blog post, one way to manage our Fabric capacity costs is to pause the capacity while not in use and resume it again when needed. While this can help with cost management, as it is a manual process, it is prone to human error, which makes it impractical in the long run.

The Solution

A more practical solution is to automate a daily process to pause and resume our Fabric capacity automatically. This can be done by running Azure Management APIs. Depending on our expertise, there are several ways to achieve the goal, such as running APIs on running the APIs via PowerShell (scheduling the runs separately), running the APIs via CloudShell, creating a flow in Power Automate, or creating the workflow in Azure Logic Apps. I prefer the latter, so this blog post explains the method.

I also explain the same scenario on my YouTube channel. Here is the video:

Automating Pause and Resume Fabric Capacity with Azure Logic Apps

Here is the scenario: we are going to create an Azure Logic Apps workflow that automatically does the following:

  • Check the time of the day
  • If it is between 8 am to 4 pm:
  • Check the status of the Fabric capacity
  • If the capacity is paused, then resume it, otherwise do nothing
  • If it is after 4 pm and before 8 am:
  • Check the status of the Fabric capacity
  • If the capacity is resumed, then pause it, otherwise do nothing

Follow these steps to implement the scenario in Azure Logic Apps:

  1. Login to Azure Portal and search for “Logic App“
  2. Click the Logic App service
Finding Logic Apps on Azure Portal

This navigates us to the Logic App service. If you currently have existing Logic Apps workflows, they will appear here.

Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric: Capacity Cost Management Part 2, Automate Pause/Resume Capacity with Azure Logic Apps” →