Configure and manage capacities in Power BI Premium - Power BI (2023)

Managing Power BI Premium involves creating, managing, and monitoring Premium capacities. This article provides step-by-step instructions; for an overview of capacities.

Learn how to manage Power BI Premium and Power BI Embedded capacities, which provide reserved resources for your content.

Capacity is at the heart of the Power BI Premium and Power BI Embedded offerings. It's a set of resources reserved for exclusive use by your organization. Having a capacity enables you to publish dashboards, reports, and datasets to users throughout your organization without having to purchase per-user licenses for them. It also offers dependable, consistent performance for the content hosted in capacity. For more information, see What is Power BI Premium?.

Manage capacity

After you have purchased capacity nodes in Microsoft 365, you set up the capacity in the Power BI admin portal. You manage Power BI Premium capacities in the Capacity settings section of the portal.

You manage a capacity by selecting the name of the capacity. This takes you to the capacity management screen.

If no workspaces have been assigned to the capacity, you'll see a message about assigning a workspace to the capacity.

Renew your capacity

Each capacity has a certain amount of v-cores allocated to it. When the v-cores expire, your capacity stops working. To renew your capacity, visit the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Setting up a new capacity (Power BI Premium)

The admin portal shows the number of virtual cores (v-cores) that you've used and that you still have available. The total number of v-cores is based on the Premium SKUs that you've purchased. For example, purchasing a P3 and a P2 results in 48 available cores – 32 from the P3 and 16 from the P2.

If you have available v-cores, set up your new capacity by following these steps.

1. Select Set up new capacity.

   See Also

   What is Power BI Premium Gen2? - Power BI

2. Give your capacity a name.

3. Define who the admin is for this capacity.

4. Select your capacity size. Available options are dependent on how many available v-cores you have. You can't select an option that is larger than what you have available.

   

5. Select Set up.

   

Capacity admins, as well as Power BI admins and global administrators, then see the capacity listed in the admin portal.

Capacity settings

1. In the Premium capacity management screen, under Actions, select the gear icon to review and update settings.

   

2. You can see who the service admins are, the SKU/size of the capacity, and what region the capacity is in.

   

3. You can also rename or delete a capacity.

   

Change capacity size

Power BI admins and global administrators can change Power BI Premium capacity. Capacity admins who aren't a Power BI admin or global administrator don't have this option.

1. Select the capacity name you want to change the size of.

2. Select Change size. You can see the

   

3. On the Change size screen, upgrade or downgrade your capacity as appropriate.

   Note

   To upgrade to a P4 or a P5 capacity you need to buy a few smaller SKUs that will add up to the size of the capacity you want.

   

   Administrators are free to create, resize and delete nodes, so long as they have the requisite number of v-cores.

   P SKUs can't be downgraded to EM SKUs. You can hover over any disabled options to see an explanation.

Manage user permissions

You can assign additional capacity admins, and assign users that have contributor permissions. Users that have contributor permissions can assign a workspace to a capacity if they're an admin of that workspace. They can also assign their personal My Workspace to the capacity. Users with contributor permissions don't have access to the admin portal.

Expand Contributor permissions, then add users or groups as appropriate.

Assign a workspace to a capacity

There are two ways to assign a workspace to a capacity: in the admin portal; and from a workspace.

Assign from the admin portal

Capacity admins, along with Power BI admins and global administrators, can bulk assign workspaces in the premium capacity management section of the admin portal. When you manage a capacity, you see a Workspaces assigned to this capacity section that allows you to assign workspaces.

1. Select Assign workspaces.

2. Select an option for Apply to.

   

   Selection	Description
   Workspaces by users	When you assign workspaces by user, or group, all the workspaces that the user or group is admin of become part of the Premium capacity, including the user's personal workspace. The users automatically get workspace assignment permissions. This includes workspaces already assigned to a different capacity.
   Specific workspaces	Enter the name of a specific workspace to assign to the selected capacity.
   The entire organization's workspaces	Assigning the entire organization's workspaces to Premium capacity assigns all workspaces and My Workspaces, in your organization, to this Premium capacity. In addition, all current and future users will have the permission to reassign individual workspaces to this capacity.

3. Select Apply.

Assign from workspace settings

You can also assign a workspace to a Premium capacity from the settings of that workspace. To move a workspace into a capacity, you must have admin permissions to that workspace, and also capacity assignment permissions to that capacity. Note that workspace admins can always remove a workspace from Premium capacity, unless it's a personal workspace and the Power BI admin has disabled the Users can reassign personal workspaces tenant admin setting.

1. Edit a workspace by selecting the ellipsis (. . .) then selecting Edit this workspace.

   

2. Under Edit this workspace, expand Advanced.

3. Select the capacity that you want to assign this workspace to.

   

4. Select Save.

Once saved, the workspace and all its contents are moved into Premium capacity without any experience interruption for end users.

Designate a default capacity for My workspaces

A Power BI admin or capacity admin can designate a capacity as the default capacity for My workspaces. They have two options:

• They can designate the capacity as the default capacity for all new My workspaces. In this case, all new My workspaces will be assigned to that capacity by default upon creation. Existing My workspaces remain where they are.
• They can designate the capacity as the default capacity for all new My workspaces and all existing My workspaces. In this case, all existing My workspaces will be reassigned to that capacity, and all new My workspaces will be assigned to that capacity by default upon creation.

Designate a default capacity for all new My workspaces

1. In the Admin portal, select Capacity settings from the navigation pane.

2. From the list of capacities that appears, select the name of the capacity you wish to specify as the default capacity.

3. On the capacity page, expand the Preferred capacity for My workspace option and turn on the toggle.

   

   When the toggle is on, all new My workspaces will be assigned to this Premium capacity by default upon creation.

Designate a default capacity for all existing and new My workspaces

1. In the Admin portal, select Capacity settings from the navigation pane.

2. From the list of capacities that appears, select the name of the capacity you wish to specify as the default capacity.

3. On the capacity page, expand the Workspaces assigned to this capacity option and then choose Assign workspaces, as described in Assign from the admin portal.

4. On the assign workspaces side panel that opens, select the The entire organization's My Workspaces option.

   When this option is selected, all existing My workspaces will be assigned to this Premium capacity, and all new My workspaces will be assigned to this capacity by default upon creation.

Power BI Report Server product key

On the Capacity settings tab of the Power BI admin portal, you'll have access to your Power BI Report Server product key. This will only be available for Global Admins or users assigned the Power BI service administrator role and if you have purchased a Power BI Premium SKU.

Selecting Power BI Report Server key will display a dialog contain your product key. You can copy it and use it with the installation.

For more information, see Install Power BI Report Server.

Next steps

Managing Premium capacities

More questions? Try asking the Power BI Community

Power BI has released Power BI Premium Gen2, which improves the Power BI Premium experience with improvements in the following:

• Performance
• Per-user licensing
• Greater scale
• Improved metrics
• Autoscaling
• Reduced management overhead

For more information about Power BI Premium Gen2, see Power BI Premium Generation 2.