Are you currently using Microsoft Fabric or considering migrating to it? If so, there are a couple of options to significantly reduce your monthly running costs.
Firstly, there’s the option of reserved capacity. This is where you purchase capacity up front and receive a 50% reduction in costs vs. the standard cost for that pricing tier.
However, this assumes that you need to have your capacity running 24 * 7, and this is very often not the case.
Take a typical reporting scenario where you have an overnight process that pulls the data in from your various source systems and generates your reporting model. In this case you only actually need Fabric running for the duration of the process, and as the standard pricing model is pay as you go, you only have to pay for what you need.
This can give you huge savings, and you can even automate the switch on and off of Fabric as part of your overnight process.
Let’s assume you have an F4 capacity and conservatively estimate that your overnight process takes 2 hours to complete.
An F4 capacity is around £450 per month. This is based on 24 * 7 usage.
Now we only need that running for 2 hours or 1/12 of each day.
So we divide that £450 by 12 and get our actual monthly running cost which is £37.50.
This is a 91% saving on the out of the box cost and even an 83% saving on the comparable reserved capacity cost (£225).
It isn’t a problem if you have Power BI reports layered on top either. You simply set up a Power BI Pro workspace for them to reside in, refresh them as part of your overnight process, and purchase Power BI Pro licenses that retail at around £12 per user per month.
This is the exact setup I’ve implemented for a few of my clients and it really does make Fabric not only a very powerful option but also a very cost effective one too.
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