Microsoft Fabric: Setting up a Fabric Capacity in Azure and assigning it to a Fabric Workspace
Disclaimer
This is a guide to create Microsoft Fabric Capacities. Please note that these capacities will incur costs from the moment of creation and can be very expensive. Failing to right-size or neglecting to pause Fabric Capacities, and in general, not being aware of costs, is your own responsibility. Any runaway costs are also your own responsibility.
Motivation
A few days ago, as I was to do some exploration in Microsoft Fabric on my own Azure Tenant. I was hit by a limitation on trials for my tenant.
This gave me a reason to explore Fabric Capacity in Azure. Fabric can be licensed with Power BI licensing or through Fabric Capacities.
Fabric Capacities function as compute pools that can be assigned to specific Fabric workspaces. They offer the flexibility of provisioning in different locations, physical to your data. Moreover, Capacities can be sized and paused to align with budget constraints, providing a higher level of control.
As individual(out of trail) it is also less administrative and runs well with MSDN.
Setting up the Fabric Capacity
We need a Microsoft Entry Id (formerly AAD) user with the Azure role of Contributor; less privileged might be possible. Contributor is an Azure role that works exclusively in the Azure context, and our Fabric Capacity is to be created as a resource in Azure.
Then we need a user with the Microsoft Entry Id role of Fabric Administrator. This user can assign a Fabric Capacity to a workspace. Azure roles and Microsoft Entry Id roles are two different types of roles; still, one user can hold both.
The plan looks like this:
- Enabling Microsoft.Fabric Azure service provider
- Assigning the Contributer role
- Assigning the Fabric administrator role
- Provision the Fabric Capacity
- Assign Fabric Capacity to Fabric Workspace
Before we start
It is assumed you already have an Azure user and can log into both Azure and Fabric.
In my case I have created an Azure Resource group named FabricPlayground for holding my Fabric Capacity and my user is named Fabric explorer.
Enabling Microsoft.Fabric Azure service provider
The Fabric Capacity needs a subscription for billing. Azure operates like a plugin system, and service providers act as plugins to add features and services to Azure. By default, the Microsoft.Fabric service provider is disabled, and a Contributor or Owner role on the Azure Subscription is required to enable it. Service providers is only enabled on one Azure Subscription, so this needs to be done for every subscription if needed.
Assigning the Contributer role
This role is only needed for creating the Fabric Capacity in Azure. You might already have enough privileges or even an Azure Admin who can create the Fabric Capacity resource.
Assigning Fabric administrator role
This role is needed to assign a Fabric Capacity to a workspace. You might already have it, or you may have a Fabric/Power BI admin who can do it.
Creating the Fabric runtime
Please be aware of this part, as it will determine the price of your Fabric Capacity, and it can be very expensive.
Navigate to your resource group for creating the Fabric Capacity. I personally start with F2, the cheapest option. What you do is up to you, but take note of the prices given when selecting sizes. It is, by default, set to size F64, which is very expensive, and Microsoft should have set the cheapest option, F2, as the default if somebody asked me.
Assign Fabric Capacity to Fabric workspace
To my knowlegde there is 2 ways to do this. Both requires to be signed into the Fabric/Power BI portal. I go via www.powerbi.com
- When creating new workspace.
- When post-assigning to an already existing workspace.
When creating new workspace:
When post-assigning to an already existing workspace
