Choose SKU based on Business Requirements

1. Choose SKU based on Business Requirements

Let's talk about identifying business requirements for Microsoft Fabric. When setting up your environment, you need to balance two key things - giving your organization what it needs while keeping costs under control. As a Fabric administrator, getting this balance right is one of your most important jobs.

2. Fabric Pricing Plans - SKU

Fabric uses SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) with different Capacity Units (CU). Think of CUs like engine cylinders and SKUs as cars - more CUs mean better performance but also higher costs.

3. Which SKU to choose?

SKUs start at F2 and go up to F2048, with each level doubling both power and price. Choosing the right SKU is crucial. Too small, and your system slows down - limiting data refreshes and report access. Too large, and you're paying for power you don't use.

4. How to decide?

This choice is complex and depends on your specific needs - how many users you have, how many reports you run, your budget, and what kind of performance you need. While Microsoft's documentation and consultants can help, here's a practical approach: start with a free trial, migrate some resources to simulate real activity, and use the Fabric Capacity Metrics app to monitor usage.

5. The Fabric Capacity Metrics App

Let's talk about The Fabric Capacity Metrics App, a monitoring tool that can be installed in your Microsoft Fabric environment. It provides detailed statistics about CU usage and resource consumption across various Fabric activities, such as data refreshes and pipeline executions. When evaluating a specific SKU, you can simulate workloads (such as dataset refreshes) to analyze if your Fabric capacity can handle the expected workload. If the CU usage consistently exceeds 100%, this indicates that the selected SKU may be insufficient for your needs. This app is crucial for simulating production workloads before committing to a specific Fabric SKU plan.

6. Let's practice!

After having explored the concept of SKU and the Fabric Capacity Metrics app, let's put this knowledge into practice.

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