Implementing As Partition Processing via Azure Functions–Part 2

In the previous blog post we walked through how to implement the As Partition Processing (open-source) solution using Azure Functions which generated some good questions and discussions. As a result, I’ve decided to take this another step and show you how to implement this solution using the Visual Studio Azure Function project type and modify […]

Implementing AS Partition Processing via Azure Functions

Last year, Christian Wade released an open source solution to automate partition management and tabular model processing. As someone who’s spent a lot of time setting up similar solutions for clients over the years, I can assure you this is a great contribution to the community and will save you and/or your clients a ton […]

When to Scale-Up or Scale-Out with Azure Analysis Services

Of all the new features and capabilities currently available with Azure Analysis Services, dynamic scaling up/down and in/out are my 2 favorite. Scaling Up refers to adding more (CPU and/or memory) resources Scaling Out refers to adding more servers Together these features allow you to adjust resources to match changes in workload with only a […]

Methods for Deploying to Azure Analysis Services

This post covers the most common methods for deploying tabular models while explaining the trade offs for each option. Here are some questions to help you decide which one is most appropriate for your environment: Will you (the SSAS expert) be deploying the solution or do you need to hand it off to a production […]

Using the Azure REST API to Pause All AS Instances in a Resource Group

Forgetting to shutdown your Azure environments and burning through a month’s worth of Azure MSDN credit if you’re lucky (and racking up a large credit card charge if you’re not) is a pretty common experience these days. Some might even call it a right-of-passage (like running a DELETE statement in PROD and forgetting the WHERE-clause). […]

Monitoring Azure Analysis Services Instances via Azure Portal

At some point in the past couple weeks/months, the Azure Analysis Services team managed to expose a few more metrics to the Azure AS Monitoring / Metrics blade. Last I checked, there were only 2 metrics available… Memory and QPU… arguably two of the most important metrics to track as they indicate if/when it’s time to […]

Managing User Access to Azure Analysis Services Databases

In order to access a tabular model, users must either be a member of the Analysis Services instance administrators group or granted access via a database role. For on-premise SSAS instances, this meant adding the windows user account (e.g. Domain\User) to the SSAS database project via SSDT during development (or after deployment via SSMS). However, […]

Connecting to Azure Analysis Services via Excel – Easy Mode

Power BI is certainly picking up speed, but the number 1 ad-hoc reporting client in Analysis Services environments continues to be Excel. Not much of a surprise really… Excel is a super popular tool across a wide-variety of users. Once you train someone how to use a pivot table, there’s no going back! In fact, […]

Managing Your Azure AS Environment with PowerShell – Building Blocks

One of the major value propositions of Azure AS (and this is true for many cloud technologies) is flexibility – spinning up more resources when demand spikes and turn things off when they aren’t – so that you’re only paying for what you need. In order to take advantage of this flexibility, we need to […]

Managing Your Azure AS Environment with PowerShell – Getting Started

One of the major value propositions of Azure AS (and this is true for many cloud technologies) is flexibility – spinning up more resources when demand spikes and turn things off when they aren’t – so that you’re only paying for what you need. Consider your own Analysis Services environment. If it’s anything like the […]