What is the Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app?

Fabric resides on a capacity, which is a pool of resources allocated to your platform. Each capacity has its own number of Capacity Units (CUs). CUs are used to measure the compute power available for your capacity.

The Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app is designed to provide monitoring capabilities for Microsoft Fabric capacities. Use the app to monitor your capacity consumption and make informed decisions on how to use your capacity resources. For example, the app can help identify when to scale up your capacity or when to turn on autoscale.

The app is updated often with new features and functionalities and provides the most in-depth information into how your capacities are performing.

Install the app

You must be a capacity admin to install and view the Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app.

To install the app, follow the instructions in Install the Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app.

Features and functionalities

The Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app provides various features and functionalities to help you monitor and manage your capacities effectively. The app includes the following pages:

• Health page (preview): Get a high-level overview for all capacities you're admin of, and identify those capacities consuming the most compute or experiencing issues like throttling or query rejections. To learn more, see Understand the metrics app Health page
• Compute page: Get a 14-day view of your capacity’s compute performance. Visuals include ribbon charts, utilization trends, and a matrix of operations, helping you analyze usage patterns, peak loads, and throttling events. To learn more, see Understand the metrics app compute page.
• Storage page: Monitor storage usage over the past 30 days. View current and billable storage by workspace, track soft-deleted data, and explore trends through column charts and detailed tables. To learn more, see Understand the metrics app storage page.
• Timepoint page: Drill into a specific 30-second timepoint to see which operations—interactive or background—consumed the most compute. Use this page to diagnose overloads and understand autoscale or throttling behavior. To learn more, see Understand the metrics app timepoint page.
• Timepoint summary page (preview): Summarizes operation types (not individual operations) that contributed to capacity usage during a selected timepoint. Ideal for identifying high-impact workloads and understanding autoscale thresholds. To learn more, see Understand the metrics app timepoint summary page.
• Timepoint item detail page (preview): Provides granular detail on operations within a specific item at a timepoint. Includes filters for operation ID, user, and CU thresholds—useful for root-cause analysis and performance tuning. To learn more, see Understand the metrics app timepoint item detail page.
• Autoscale compute for Spark page: This page provides insights into the autoscaling behavior of Spark workloads, helping you optimize performance and resource allocation. To learn more, see Understand the metrics app Autoscale compute for Spark page.
• Autoscale compute for Spark detail page: Dive deeper into autoscale operations to understand which workloads triggered scaling and how they contributed to overall capacity usage. To learn more, see Understand Autoscale compute for Spark detail page.
• Plan capacity: Learn how to estimate the right capacity SKU for your workloads using the metrics app and the Fabric SKU Estimator. Helps avoid over- or underprovisioning. To learn more, see Plan your capacity size.
• Monitor paused capacity: Track when a capacity was paused or resumed, and understand why utilization spikes may appear during pauses. Includes guidance on interpreting carryforward operations. To learn more, see Monitor a paused capacity.
• Calculations: Understand how the app computes key metrics like CU usage, throttling, and autoscale impact. Useful for interpreting visuals and validating internal reporting. To learn more, see Metrics app calculations.

Share the Fabric Capacity Metrics report

When you install the Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app, it creates a workspace in your Microsoft Fabric tenant. To share the report, you must be a capacity admin.

To share the Fabric Capacity Metrics report, follow these steps:

1. Open the Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app.
2. Navigate to the workspace where the app is installed.
3. Select the Share button.

You can choose to share with users in your organization or with business-to-business (B2B) users from an external organization who has been invited into your tenant as a guest (via Azure B2B collaboration). This is useful when you want someone outside your organization (like a consultant or partner) to view Fabric Capacity Metrics without moving them into your internal tenant.

Considerations and limitations

When using the Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app, consider the following considerations and limitations:

• Data for new capacities isn't visible in the Metrics app until the next scheduled refresh. Data for new items and workspaces isn't visible until the next scheduled refresh after their first operation consuming CUs within the past 14 days. To view the data before the next scheduled refresh, initiate a manual refresh of the semantic model.
• To hide user emails in the app, disable the Show user data in the Fabric Capacity Metrics app and reports setting in the Admin portal.
• Billable items and operations consume CU units from your capacity and are paid for by your organization. Non-billable items and operations reflect preview features that don't count towards your capacity limit, and aren't paid for. They provide an indication of possible future impact on your capacity. When preview features become generally available, your organization starts paying for them and their impact on your capacity is taking into account.
• In the Capacity utilization and throttling visual logarithmic's view, the primary axis seen on the left of the visual, isn't aligned with the secondary axis seen on the right of the visual.
• In the interactive and background operation tables, the Throttling(s) column displays zero when throttling is disabled, even when the capacity is overloaded.
• There's a difference of 0.01-0.05 percent between the CU % value in the Top row visuals Heartbeat line chart, and the interactive and background operations tables Total CU values.
• When the capacity state remains unchanged during the selected dates or the past 14 days, it won't appear in the System Event table.
• Sampling might occur while exporting data from the Export Data page. See second and third bullet in Considerations and limitations.
• The semantic model used by the Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics application is only supported for use by the reports provided in the application. Any consumption from, usage of, or modification of the semantic model isn't supported.
• The cumulative consumption of CU seconds for a specific item over the past 14 days is displayed in the CU (s) column of the matrix by item and operation table. If the item was moved from another workspace to the current workspace in the last 14 days, the cumulative consumption of CU seconds for the item in the previous workspace is included in the CU (s) column.
• The Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app doesn't support environments that use private links.
• The threshold values on throttling visuals don't reflect applied surge protection settings. To view the actual surge protection thresholds, refer to the Admin Portal in the Power BI service.

Related content

• Install the Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app