Since the announcement in March that Power BI Premium P-SKUs are being retired and that customers will need to migrate to F-SKU capacities intead I have been asked the same question several times:
Why are you forcing me to migrate to Fabric???
This thread on Reddit is a great example. What I want to make clear in this post is the following:
Moving from P-SKU capacities to F-SKU capacities is not the same thing as enabling Fabric in your tenant
No-one is being forced to migrate from Power BI to Fabric and using F-SKU capacities does not mean you are using Fabric. Access to Fabric for your users is governed by the tenant-level settings documented here and these settings work the same way regardless of whether you’re using a P-SKU capacity or an F-SKU capacity. If you do not enable Fabric you can carry on using Power BI in exactly the same way as you did before, with exactly the same functionality, when you move to using an F-SKU capacity. Your users will not have the ability to create Fabric items like notebooks, warehouses, lakehouses and so on just because you’re using an F-SKU.
As the announcement blog post explains, moving to F-SKUs will involve changes about how and where you purchase your capacities and there will be some features that are only available in F-SKU capacities. Migrating workspaces to a new F-SKU capacity is fairly straightforward (and no different from moving a workspace from one P-SKU capacity to another) but if you have questions about how to perform the migration or how this affects how much you’re paying for Power BI you should contact your Microsoft account team.
In the post, you mention some Fabric features are only available on F-SKUs. Can you provide more information?
There are some examples in the blog post that I linked to: trusted workspace access for OneLake shortcuts is one.
Aren’t F-SKUs a bit more pricey than their P-SKUs counterparts?
Not really.
Depends on how you buy them. There is a PAYG option that is more expensive, but very flexible. And there is a Reserved Capacity option that is the same price as the P SKUs.
Reserved Capacity requires an annual commitment, but for most customers, that’s normal.
Personally, I recommend Reserved Capacity for stable, big workloads and suggest looking at PAYG for Dev/Test environments.
With PAYG, you can scale as needed (up to look like Production and then back down).
And… if you have a Dev environment that shuts down at night and weekends, it might be less expensive than Reserved Capacity. I ran the numbers and if you can “pause” your environment for more than 10 hours per day (like over night) then PAYG pricing is less than Reserved Capacity. BUT… you have to pause it. 🙂
Hope that helps.
Andy
http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com
Chris, thank you…
Your comments are true and I can understand the frustration.
There is no requirement to use the other Fabric experiences, yet.
But there are three items that are relevant to this discussion.
1. The Fabric licensing for Premium EM and A is bad news. All EM options (which include read-only rights for all users) is going away. The Fabric equivalent SKUs (in performance) are the lower F SKUs, which require Power BI Pro licensing for all read-only users. That means EM customers will see a big cost increase. We have a number of customers who are very, very upset about this change.
2. Power BI Report Server dual-use rights are going away. They are available with Premium P, but are not included with F SKUs. There was a bogus argument that they are not compatible with Fabric, but it was always paperwork, so that makes no sense. Again, a number of our customers are frustrated that they bought P SKUs in good-faith to also run PBI Report Server on-prem and now… they have to purchase SQL Server Enterprise edition licenses and carry SA to do the same thing. That is a cost increase.
3. Finally, I’m seeing Power BI features go on the chopping block, only to be replaced by Fabric features. AutoML in Dataflows (being replaced by Data Science) is one and the fact that Dataflows Gen1 is called Gen1 now, leads me to believe it’s only a matter of time. So, while customers don’t have to use Fabric, the reality is for some Power BI features that are migrating it won’t be an option in the future.
Now, that sounded kind of harsh, and items 1 & 2 are because I don’t like cost increases. But I happen to be a big fan of Fabric and I think it’s a fabulous tool and the direction customers should go. But I would love to see a roadmap of Power BI features that are moving to Fabric, so customers can see the future, jump on board, and put together project plans to get there? That would really help…
Thanks…
Andy
http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com
Licensing Power BI is non-trivial. Getting a reasonable bang-for-the-buck on reserved capacity is an almost impossible goal nowadays. I think reserved capacity is discouraged by Microsoft in favor of PAYG, and they certainly don’t give us the tools to get the most value out of reserved capacity.
Even before the F sku’s, Microsoft was continually changing the meaning of premium capacity. For example we used to have isolated background vs foreground cpu. Now it is all fungible. Also cpu seems to be fungible across TIME, and you can “borrow” from future cpu in a way that will “catch up with you” and create outages that last for two hours into the future or more!
The biggest problem with the fungibility of background and foreground cpu is the way the background cpu is averaged across the entire day. There is NO WAY to get full value out of the “overnight” CU’s . Because even if you try to concentrate the background operations to happen at night, it will still incur a debt that will be paid in the future rather than using the capacity that is going to waste overnight.
If you use the reservation recommender in Azure (it’s turned on by default), you will get recommendations on which RI to buy based on your usage pattern. RIs are super granular so you can optimize your commitment and maximize savings.
Something that confuses me is people say you have to have an F64 to have all the same features as a P1. However I am not clear what “features” are missing if you got an F32 vs F64 other than “speed” (generic term). I have not seen that documented.
Its because you only have free powerbi access for your tenant use F64. Using P1, you only need a PRO account do developemnt, in Fabric its only possible using F64. If you want to use powerbi with free account, you need to develop a portal, like you do with Embedded.
So here’s how it works.
An F64 and higher actually includes a Power BI Premium P environment. Granted, it shares compute with the other Fabric experiences, but it provides a full Premium P environment with all the features of Premium P. That means it has multi-geo, higher data model sizes, dataflow pipelines, bring your on key for data encryption, etc… All the high-end stuff big orgs need, including 100TB of Power BI storage.
An F32 and lower actually “works with Power BI”. None of those lower F SKUs include a Power BI environment directly. Instead, you have to fire up a Power BI Pro subscription which comes with its own data storage and is limited compared to a Premium P environment. (Lower model sizes, etc…) Now, what’s cool is the Fabric workspaces can include Power BI content and share security controls (works with). So… with a lower F SKU capacity working with Power BI feels just like the higher F SKUs, but the Power BI feature set is different.
Summary
F64 and higher – Power BI included and brings Premium P features
F32 and lower – Power BI not included but works with Power BI Pro workspaces
Hope that helps.
Andy Snodgrass
http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com
I know what you’re trying to explain here but it’s not correct to say that “Power BI is not included” with F32 and lower. There’s a licensing difference: if you have a workspace on an F64 or above then you can use a Power BI Free licence to consume content in that workspace; if you are using a F32 the rules are the same as if you’re using Shared today, namely that you need a Power BI Pro licence to consume content as well as create it.
Chris, I think we’re into semantics here.
My point is that purchasing an F32 or lower SKU does not give me (creator or consumer) the right to use Power BI. I have to purchase Power BI separately.
So, in my mind, that means Power BI is not included with F32 or lower.
I can still use Power BI in an F32 deployment, but I have to pay for it separately.
Does that sound right?
Andy
I agree we’re just discussing terminology here. I still don’t like the phrase “Power BI is not included in with F32 or lower” though. If you’re using Shared/Pro you still need licences to publish and consume, and you can’t say that Power BI is not included there.
Ok Chris,
I appreciate that.
So how about this?
“With F32 and lower, all Power BI usage must be licensed separately, whereas with F64 and higher, Power BI usage for consumers is included and only creators need Power BI licensing.”
Honestly, the biggest discussions I’ve had recently have been the loss of consumer rights with Power BI EM levels (because they all map to F32 and lower).
And, for some reason (which suprises me), there’s a bunch of our customers who were using the dual-use rights of Premium P to deploy PBI Report Server on-prem. And they’re upset about the loss of those rights.
Are you hearing much in those areas?
Andy
I can’t remember the last time I met a customer with an EM SKU and I don’t believe they are widely used. However with the PBI Report Server licensing question we do know this is a problem so stay tuned…
In general when I look at reserved capacity F64 vs a P1 the basic price of an F64 seems to be much higher.
However, as a nonprofit the P SKU nonprofit pricing is heavily discounted compared to regular pricing. Microsoft does not seem to offer discounts on the Azure side for F SKUs (only small generic Azure Grant for nonprofits that we already use).
Is there any word if F SKU discounts is something that will be added for nonprofits? F SKUs like F64 especially without nonprofit discounts seem to be much more expensive.
Love to see MS continue to support Nonprofits/NGOs with Power BI and Fabric.
Alan