Since the release of the Power BI Premium Capacity Metrics app last month (blog post August 2018), we’ve been working hard making improvements in the layout and metrics. We’re excited to share the new look and feel of the app and announce the availability of new metrics for monitoring queries running on a capacity.
Query metrics along with existing comprehensive view of datasets refreshes, dataset evictions and system metrics, provide a more in-depth and complete picture of the capacity’s overall health. This app enabled Power BI admins and capacity admins to make informed, data driven decision in-order to make the best use of the capacity.
New look and feel for monitoring report
The report within the Power BI Premium Capacity Monitoring app has been updated with new navigation. The number of pages have been simplified to just three.
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Filters applied to all pages – Allows you to optionally filter the other pages in the report to a specific capacity.
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Datasets – Provides detailed metrics on the health of the datasets within your capacity.
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System – Provides overall capacity metrics including memory and high CPU utilization.
On the datasets page itself, new bookmark navigation has been added to the top enabling you to switch between the different datasets metrics.
Query Metrics
Clicking on the Queries bookmark on the top of the datasets page will brings up the new query metrics:
| Marker on the chart above | Description of Query Metrics |
| 1. | The total number of queries run, total number of query wait count for Live query/Direct query, average/max query duration in milliseconds, average/max query wait time in milliseconds sliced by dataset, workspace and hourly buckets for the past seven days. |
| 2. | Lists the top five datasets by the average query duration in milliseconds. |
| 3. | Lists the top five datasets by average of query wait time in milliseconds. Query wait time is the time between when a query was supposed to start and when it did start. Long query wait times can occur under high CPU utilization or when waiting for evictions to complete. |
| 4. | Shows the query counts, average duration (in ms) vs. memory consumption in GB split into one-hour buckets reported in local time. |
| 5. | Shows the query counts, average wait time (in ms) vs. memory consumption in GB split into one-hour buckets reported in local time. |
Long query durations and long wait times could be a sign that a capacity running hot. It may also mean that the datasets themselves could benefit from optimizations and further investigation is needed.
Installing the app
Let’s get started by installing the service app. If you have a previous version of the app already installed, it’s best to delete it from your apps and then hit refresh to avoid confusion with versions.
The app can be installed by searching for “Power BI Premium Capacity Metrics” in the Power BI apps or by clicking here to get it now.
Additional steps to use the Premium Capacity Monitoring app with Power BI Embedded
This same app can be used to monitor any A SKU capacities you may have in Power BI Embedded. They will appear in the report provided you’re an admin of the capacity. Refresh of the report can fail unless you grant certain permissions to Power BI on your A SKUs. This can be done by opening your capacity in the Azure portal, clicking on Access control (IAM) and adding the “Power BI Premium” app to the Reader role. If you’re unable to find the app by name, you can also add it by its client Id: cb4dc29f-0bf4-402a-8b30-7511498ed654.
Moving forward
Now that you have the app installed, you can see metrics about all the capacities in your organization for which you are an admin. You can now make more informed decisions and more effectively manage the premium capacities, workspaces and datasets in your organization. These metrics are just the start. More detailed metrics and tooling will become available in the following weeks and months. And be sure to submit your ideas for more any suggestions.
Learn more about what Power BI premium is, managing premium capacities and how Power BI Premium works.
Check out "Deploying and managing Microsoft Power BI Premium capacities to your entire organization" session from the Microsoft Business Application Summit to see how to use these new reports.