Power BI: Discover What License Is Best for Your Money

Am I choosing the correct license for my budget and needs?

In the dynamic realm of Data Analytics, the recent release of Fabric is creating a buzz, leaving professionals eager to explore the features that promise to elevate their data and insights. This article delves into the latest product release, shedding light on Fabric Capacity and its potential impact on Power BI subscription choices.

Previously, Power BI offered subscription models such as Pro, Premium EM, Premium PPU, or Premium P. The introduction of Fabric Capacity adds another dimension to this landscape.

Microsoft Fabric Free (The Artist formerly known as Power BI Free)

Microsoft Fabric Free (The Artist formerly known as Power BI Free): Free

This option suits individuals and small-scale businesses that do not need enterprise features. It allows users access to Power BI to simply basic reports to help gain insights on their data. Some restrictions here include, but are not limited to:

  • Data refresh only once per day.
  • Data set limitation of 1GB
  • Cloud data storage is capped at 10 GB
  • Can only collaborate with a limited number of users
  • Row-Level Security (RLS) limitations
  • Limited Power BI API access
  • Limited availability to advanced data connectors

Power BI Pro

Power BI Pro: $10/month per user

Power BI Pro operates on a user-based licensing model, catering to individual users engaged in content creation or consumption within the Power BI service.

It facilitates seamless collaboration among users with Power BI Pro licenses, making it suitable for small teams and individual users. If you need to share with a large group of users, this may not be the model for you and your organization.

The feature-rich Power BI Pro includes a comprehensive set of tools for creating, sharing, and collaborating on reports and dashboards.

Premium (PPU)

Premium (PPU): $20/month/user

Power BI Premium Per User license is a great option when you have a small number of users that need the premium features, such as paginated reports, advanced AI, and enhanced collaboration features but do not need to distribute the reports to an entire organization. The benefit here is that the license cost per user is cost-effective versus going to a dedicated capacity plan.

Premium P (Capacity)

Premium P (Capacity): from $5,000/month up to $80,000/month

Power BI Premium Capacity targets larger organizations with robust reporting needs, offering dedicated cloud resources for handling extensive datasets and complex workloads.

Organizations leveraging Premium Capacity can distribute reports and dashboards to a broader audience, extending access to users without Power BI Pro (PPU) licenses.

Advanced AI capabilities, including Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) and AI visuals, enhance data analysis beyond the capabilities of Power BI Pro.

Support for paginated reports, combined with enhanced administration and monitoring features, distinguishes Premium Capacity in managing resource usage across the organization.

Premium EM (Embedded)

Premium EM (Embedded): from $625/month up to $3,000/month

Premium EM is tailored for scenarios where organizations seek to embed Power BI analytics and reports within their applications, products, or portals.

Designed for independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers, Premium EM focuses on embedding analytics seamlessly into custom applications.

External users gain access to embedded reports and dashboards without needing individual Power BI Pro licenses.

Fabric (Capacity)

Fabric (Capacity): $0 upfront cost for the resource and then pay as you go, for instance, compute runtime.

Fabric Capacity builds upon the Premium Capacity model, introducing additional features to cater to evolving organizational needs. Some of those features include, but are not limited to:

  • Data Factory
  • Synapse Data Engineering
  • Synapse Data Warehouse
  • Synapse Data Science
  • Synapse Real-Time Analytics
  • Data Activator
  • OneLake
  • Copilot

Positioned as a comprehensive solution, Fabric Capacity combines the benefits of Premium Capacity with enhancements for a more robust and tailored experience.

Pay as you Go with Fabric Capacity

Conclusion

In conclusion, Power BI users now face an expanded array of subscription options, each catering to specific organizational requirements. Power BI Premium Capacity is tailored for large organizations with extensive reporting needs, while Power BI Pro suits individual users and small teams. The introduction of Fabric Capacity adds depth to the Power BI landscape, offering a more versatile solution for organizations with evolving and diverse analytics demands.

The choice between these options depends on the scale, features, and collaboration requirements of the organization, often resulting in a strategic combination of different licenses to meet unique needs.

If you have questions about PowerBI licensing, let us know, and we will help you. For FREE!

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Azure VMs – How To Go Green

This article will help guide you to go green with your Azure VMs and save some green! ????

When building a cloud solution, many different items need to be considered. One of these items, which will help guide you in the right direction, would be following the Azure Well-Architected Framework. This is a framework all cloud professionals should be informed about. If your solution is already deployed, take the Assessment Review and see where you can improve:

The Azure Well-Architected Framework Pillars:

  • cost management
  • operational excellence
  • performance efficiency
  • reliability
  • security

On top of that, Microsoft is also making considerable steps towards sustainability and aligning with Green Software Principles from the Green Software Foundation.

Today, we will focus on the sustainability and cost optimizations for Azure VMs.

Go Green with Automation to Stop and Start Your VMs

Depending on your workload, you may need to start and stop your VMs on a schedule. A use case can be development servers that only need to run during business hours.

There is already an Auto-shutdown feature within the VM settings within the Operations section. However, there is no Auto-start feature as of writing this article.

Go Green with Automating Start and Stop of your VMs

Within Auto-shutdown, you simply configure a few properties:

There are many options to achieve the Auto-start functionality, but two of the most common and quickest to implement are Automation Tasks and Logic Apps.

With Automation Tasks, you configure Runbooks within your Automation Account and can browse the gallery for a plug-and-play solution. As of the time of this article, Azure Automation Run As Account will retire on September 30, 2023. So be sure to use a Managed Identity if you opt for this solution.

If you go this route, one of the most popular templates looks like the graph below:

Go Green using Azure Logic Apps to start and stop your VMs.

I would opt for a Logic App. They are very user-friendly and have an abundance of connectors and functionality. You can configure them directly within the individual VM settings, but I would not advise doing so.

If you were to configure them per VM, this is how you would do it.

Go to the Automation section of the VM:

Add a task:

Select a template:

Authenticate:

Configure the task:

Creating them in the individual VM is very easy but a pain in the ass to manage since it will create a Logic App per VM. When you start seeing the same logic repeatedly, that should be a clue that you are not abiding by the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle.

We will use parameterization to make the Logic App easier to build and manage. We will skip the steps needed to create the Logic App resource. Here is a link to guide you through those initial steps and other information around Logic Apps: Overview – Azure Logic Apps | Microsoft Learn.

For the parameterization, we will create the following parameters:

  • EmailID (string): semi-colon separated list of email addresses
  • Frequency (string): set this as “Day”
  • Interval (integer): set this as “1”
  • Notify (bool): set this as “true”
  • StartTime (string): set this as the first day you want the schedule to start
  • TimeZone (string): set this as the wanted Time Zone
    • VmList: (array): this is an JSON object with the following schema:
      {"resourceGroup": "string", "resourceVM": "string", "subscriptionId": "string"}

The first step of developing the Logic App would be to create the trigger. We will create a “Recurrence Trigger” since we are building this on a schedule. You could also make this event based on your needs with an HTTP Request, email, Service Bus, etc.

Next, we will want to loop on the VmList array. For each iteration, we will want to execute the following logic:

  • Start the VM: passing subscriptionId, resourceGroup, and resourceVM parameters
  • Send Email on Failure or Success if “Notify” parameter is “true.”

For Each Loop:

Notifications:

There you have it. A Logic App set up on a schedule to start VMs on the frequency you decide! If any changes need to be made, you can tweak your parameters. One resource with a friendlier interface with an abundance of connectors/controls/functionality to simply start/stop your VMs. As stated, there are many ways to accomplish this task, but driving towards cost optimizations and less computing; is a great solution.

If you need help saving money on your Azure subscriptions, contact us!

Happy coding!

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Austin Texas SQL Saturday was a Success!

Austin Texas SQL Saturday
Austin Texas SQL Saturday was a Success!

Austin Texas SQL Saturday was a success! Procure SQL would not exist if it wasn’t for #SQLFamily and the SQL Community. Therefore, we always want to help connect, share and learn with our local data community.

In 2010 I hosted my first SQL Saturday #36 in Wheeling, WV. One thing in common with my first SQL Saturday and last week is that I honestly had no idea how many people would show up. My first event had 70 attendees and I wasn’t sure if this one would surpass it when we decided to commit and make it happen in November 2022.

We were not 100% sure if the Austin Data community would welcome in-person events. We figured doing this event would help us decide if we should try going back to in-person events.

Austin Texas SQL Saturday – The Final Numbers

Our final numbers are as following.

  • 140 people signed up in Eventbrite to attend our SQL Saturday.
  • 78 Sessions Submitted by 34 different individuals.
    • 64 additional people on the waitlist.
    • 40 People attending Bob Ward’s All-Day SQL 2022 Workshop
    • 82 total in-person attendees.
    • 18 Sessions by 18 Speakers
    • 6 Microsoft Employees as Speakers
    • 6 Volunteers running the event. Couldn’t have done this without the following (Jay Falck, Dora Klutz, Shawn Wiestfield, LaShanna Sterrett, Conor Cunningham, Allen Kinsel and myself. )
    • 4 Concurrent tracks
    • 1 Pre-Con aka All-Day Friday presenter.

Things that worked.

  • Using Microsoft’s Office as venue – While starting the budget all over from scratch for the Austin Texas SQL Saturday. It helped to have a great free venue. In the past, we would use a bigger venue like a conference center or college. With an unknown number of attendees, it made a lot of sense to use a smaller venue. I have presented and attended Azure Bootcamps in the Microsoft Office so I knew this would be a good fit.
  • Volunteers were amazing – Jay Falck, Dora Klutz, Shawn Wiestfield, LaShanna Sterrett, Conor Cunningham, and Allen Kinsel were amazing.
  • Recorded Sessions – We were able to leverage Shawn’s UserGroup.TV setup to allow us to have a place for everyone to see the sessions once they are published. Publishing the sessions is still in progress. Hopefully, we will get these up soon.
  • Sessionize for Event App – All of the things we would typically print except the attendee badges and vendor raffle QR cards could be fully replaced with Sessionize. Next year we will reduce a lot of the printing and just have attendees use the individual app you can create in Sessionize.
  • Speakers were amazing – We had an amazing amount of speaker interest. We did release our call of speakers at the PASS Data Summit intentionally. We think this did help us get a lot of amazing speakers.
  • Food was good – We did a volunteer/speaker’s dinner where you got to taste several different great pizzas. It was Brazilian’s Steakhouse meets Pizza. We reserved a big separate room in the restaurant so people could space out if that was their preference. With Covid still being a concern, we also opted to go with box lunches for both Friday and Saturday.
  • Thank You, Sponsors – Thank you so much for being patient and understanding of us. Thank you, AzureAustin, Microsoft, SolarWinds, DBeaver, Quest, and SIOS.
  • Eventbrite Collections – This made it easier for there to be a landing page for both the SQL Saturday and All-Day Training on Friday. We noticed this was helpful for people who found us on eventbrite.

Things that did not work or needs improvement.

  • More Concurrent Sessions – One of my biggest disappointments this year was having to say, “NO!” to speakers who I greatly respect. Writing this now I still fill bad about not having enough sessions to let more people present at the Austin SQL Saturday. I know I never like getting rejected when I submit so it’s even more painful giving that news to someone else. Hopefully, next year we will have at least two more tracks. I greatly apologize to everyone who submitted but didn’t get an opportunity to present.
  • Paying for attendees’ lunch – Traditionally, attendees pay for their lunches. It’s a nominal fee around $15 to $20 dollars to offset the cost of bringing in lunch and drinks. Due to our success with sponsorship, we were able to pay for everyone’s lunches. You might be wondering why would this need improving? It took away that cost of ownership attendees have for committing to attend the Austin Texas SQL Saturday. I had multiple people share the feedback that charging for lunch would help reduce no-shows.
  • We need a bigger venue – While we could hold some more people at the Microsoft’s office it limited us from going all out on trying to maximize our attendees. This provides additional value to our sponsors and the speakers. I think next year we will consider doing Friday’s training session at Microsoft while using another venue near for the SQL Saturday event.
  • Speaker Evaluations – We skipped evaluations this year and need to find a good way to bring this back for next year.
  • Raffle QR Codes – Before the pandemic SQL Saturday organizers had a great tool for generating QR codes for the vendor raffles and producing an electronic list of attendees who chose to participate in the raffle. Unfortunately, it didn’t survive the pandemic and organizers had to come up with an alternative. Jeff Taylor has a great blog documenting a process to generate QR codes for vCard’s. I would like to make this easier for sponsors and find an affordable way to allow them to obtain a list of all QR codes scanned.

Results

The Austin Data Community is ready for in-person events again. We will be starting up in-person events. To start, we will go every other month and grow it from there.

View our Eventbrite Collection of user group meetings. All future in-person meetings will go there. Our first In-Person event is March 21st, 2023, with Cory Brown presenting Azure Synapse Link.

We are also planning to implement our lessons learned by doing another SQL Saturday in February 2024!

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SQL Saturday Austin, Texas – Free SQL Training

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SQL Saturday Austin is coming to Austin Texas. That’s right, you heard it here first! Free SQL Server training in Austin, TX!

SQL Saturday Austin Free Training
SQL Saturday Austin Free Training on Feb 24th and Feb 25th

SQL Saturday Austin is Feb 24th and 25

We hope you had a great holiday season. With the new year everyone made goals and resolutions. Are you looking to take your IT career to the next level? If so, we got you covered! The Austin SQL User Group is coming together to see if Austin SQL Server professionals are interested attending in-person training.

SQL Saturday Austin – Why Should you go?

This is a great opportunity to network with your peers in the data community. Since 2020 networking opportunities have been rare and hard to find in-person.

Free SQL Server Training from some of the best trainers in the US. There will be sessions about SQL Server, Azure, and Analytics. If you like to make data fast, secure, available, visible there will be sessions for you!

Learn SQL Server 2022 in an all-day session with Bob Ward. You can travel to conferences across the world and pay hundreds of dollars or come to Austin for the same all-day experience for $50.

SQL Saturday Austin Costs?

How much does SQL Saturday Austin cost to attend?

Great question. Friday is an all-day training event on SQL Server 2022 with Bob Ward and costs only $50 to attend.

Saturday will have multiple 1-hour sessions going concurrently from several Microsoft MVP’s, MCT’s, and national speakers and is 100% Free to Attend. You must sign up as space is limited. Currently, there are only 40 seats available.

Sign Up Now!
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