Automatically Migrating Power BI Premium Capacities to Microsoft Fabric

In early 2024, Microsoft announced the consolidation of purchase options and the retirement of Power BI Premium per capacity SKUs (P-SKUs). Starting February 1, 2025, customers with expiring Enterprise Agreements (EA) or Microsoft Cloud Agreements will no longer be able to add or purchase Power BI Premium capacities through their agreements.

As a result, organizations currently using Premium Capacity must migrate to the new Microsoft Fabric capacity. The migration process is straightforward—you only need to reassign your workspaces to the new Fabric capacity. However, for organizations managing thousands of workspaces, a manual migration can be tedious and time-consuming.

Fortunately, Microsoft has provided an automated migration approach using their open-source Semantic Link Labs package.

Note: If you're interested in a detailed guide on the manual migration process, you can read more here.

Semantic Link Labs

Semantic Link Labs is a Python library designed for use in Microsoft Fabric notebooks. This package extends the capabilities of Semantic Link, offering additional functionalities that streamline and automate complex tasks.

The goal of Semantic Link Labs is to simplify technical processes, allowing users to focus on higher-level decision-making while automating routine, machine-suited tasks.

While this package is particularly useful for Capacity Migration, it also offers other automation capabilities. You can explore additional use cases here.

Automatically Migrating with Semantic Link Labs

Prerequisites

Before starting the migration, ensure you meet the following requirements:

• Azure Subscription
• App Registration in Azure Active Directory (AAD) Register an application here Assign Contributor role permissions at the required scope (usually at the subscription level).

• Azure Key Vault Setup Set up Key Vault within the Azure Subscription. Store secrets for Tenant ID, Client ID (Application ID), and Client Secret. Ensure the user executing the notebooks has “Key Vault Secrets User” permissions.
• Fabric Permissions The user must be a Tenant Admin to execute and manage migration notebooks without permission issues.

Running The Notebook

1. Getting the notebook from the official repository.
2. Make sure you have the prerequisites in place.
3. Update the parameters
4. Click on Run All

Migration Outcome

Upon successful execution of the migration notebook the following outcomes are expected:

• F SKUs will be created for each specified P SKU capacity.
• The new Fabric SKUs will: Be created in the same region as the original P SKU. Have an equivalent SKU size as the P SKU. Retain the same admins listed on the P SKU. Ensure all workspaces are automatically migrated to the corresponding Fabric capacity.
• Naming Convention: The newly created F SKU capacities will use an alphanumeric lowercase version of the P SKU capacity name, suffixed with 'fsku'. Example: “My Capacity_3!” → “mycapacity3fsku”

Further Reading: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-fabric/blog/2024/12/02/automate-your-migration-to-microsoft-fabric-capacities/

Conclusion

Using Semantic Link Labs, businesses can efficiently automate the migration process, ensuring a seamless transition with minimal manual effort. By leveraging this open-source Python package, IT teams can streamline workload migrations, minimize errors, and accelerate deployment to Fabric.

If you're planning a migration to Microsoft Fabric, now is the time to start.

Are you preparing for the migration? Have you tried using Semantic Link Labs? I would love to learn about your experience and challenges in the comments!