fabric-monitoring

Fabric Monitoring

When to Use

• Investigating pipeline, notebook, or dataflow run failures in Microsoft Fabric
• Monitoring Fabric capacity unit (CU) consumption and identifying throttling
• Checking semantic model refresh history and diagnosing refresh failures
• Analyzing Spark job performance in notebooks
• Setting up alerts for pipeline failures or capacity overuse
• Preparing for Microsoft Fabric Data Engineer Associate (DP-700) exam

Core Jobs

1. Monitoring Hub

• Monitoring Hub = central view of all Fabric activity runs in a workspace
• Access: Fabric workspace left nav → "Monitoring Hub"
• Covers: Pipeline runs, Notebook runs, Dataflow Gen2 refreshes, Semantic model refreshes, Spark jobs
• Columns: Item name, type, status (Succeeded/Failed/In Progress), start time, duration
• Click any run → Activity run details: per-activity status, input/output, error message
• Filter by: status (failed only), item type, date range, user

2. Capacity Metrics App

• Capacity Metrics app = installed from AppSource; monitors CU usage for Fabric capacity
• Key metrics:
  • CU % — percentage of capacity consumed; >100% triggers throttling
  • Throttling — operations queued or rejected when capacity is consistently exceeded
  • Smoothing — Fabric spreads burst CU usage over a 10-minute rolling window to avoid instant throttling
• Use Capacity Metrics app to:
  • Identify which workloads consume the most CUs (Spark, SQL, Pipelines, Dataflows)
  • Find throttling incidents and their timing
  • Plan capacity scaling (upgrade SKU if consistently >80% utilization)
• Smoothing example: a 30-second Spark job consuming 100 CUs spreads impact over 10 minutes

3. Semantic Model Refresh Monitoring

• Access: Workspace → Semantic Model → Settings → Refresh history
• Refresh history shows: scheduled/on-demand refreshes, status, duration, error details
• Common refresh failures:
  • Source connectivity (credentials expired, firewall block)
  • Timeout (large model exceeding refresh timeout)
  • Memory limit (model too large for capacity SKU)
• Schedule refresh: configure in Semantic Model settings; requires gateway for on-premises sources

4. Alerts and Notifications

• Pipeline failure alerts: configure on pipeline run failure → send email or Teams notification
  • Use Failure path in Pipeline + Email/Teams activity
  • Or: Azure Monitor alert on Fabric pipeline failure metric
• Capacity alerts: in Capacity Metrics app, set threshold alerts for CU overuse
• Semantic model refresh failure: configure email notification in dataset settings → send failure email
• Reflex alerts: for Eventstream data — trigger actions when real-time data meets conditions

5. Spark Monitoring in Notebooks

• Each notebook cell shows execution duration after run
• Spark job monitoring: click "Spark jobs" in notebook toolbar → opens Spark monitoring UI
• Spark UI includes:
  • DAG visualization — shows stages and task dependencies
  • Stage/task metrics — input bytes, shuffle bytes, task duration
  • Executor logs — stderr/stdout for debugging failures
• Common Spark performance issues:
  • Data skew: one partition much larger than others (use salting or repartition)
  • Excessive shuffle: joins on non-partitioned columns (partition by join key)
  • Small files: many tiny Delta files slow reads (use OPTIMIZE command on Delta table)

6. Admin Portal Monitoring

• Admin portal → accessible to Fabric/Power BI tenant admins
• Key monitoring tools:
  • Usage metrics — who is using which items (reports, datasets); consumption trends
  • Audit logs — user activity log (create, delete, share, export); integrates with Microsoft Purview
  • Tenant settings — enable/disable features across tenant (e.g., allow external users, allow export)
  • Capacity settings — manage Fabric capacity SKUs; assign workspaces to capacities

Key Concepts

• Monitoring Hub — workspace-level view of all activity runs; primary debugging tool for failed pipelines/notebooks
• CU (Capacity Unit) — unit of Fabric compute resource; SKU determines how many CUs available
• Throttling — operations slowed or rejected when capacity CU limit exceeded
• Smoothing — 10-minute rolling window; Fabric spreads burst usage to reduce throttling frequency
• Capacity Metrics app — AppSource app for CU usage analysis; identify heavy workloads and plan scaling
• Spark UI — detailed DAG and task metrics for Spark Notebook jobs
• Audit logs — tenant-level activity log; 90-day retention; export to Log Analytics for longer retention

Checklist

• Monitoring Hub checked first when investigating pipeline/notebook failures?
• Capacity Metrics app installed and reviewed for CU utilization trends?
• Pipeline failure notifications configured (email/Teams on failure path)?
• Semantic model refresh failure email notifications enabled?
• Spark UI reviewed for data skew or shuffle issues in slow notebooks?
• OPTIMIZE command scheduled for Delta tables with many small files?
• Admin portal audit logs reviewed for unexpected data access or sharing?

Output Format

• 🔴 Critical — capacity consistently >100% CU without scaling plan (throttling affects all workloads)
• 🔴 Critical — no failure notification on critical pipelines (failures go undetected)
• 🟡 Warning — Spark notebook slow due to data skew or excessive shuffle (check Spark UI stage metrics)
• 🟡 Warning — Delta table has many small files (run OPTIMIZE to compact; improves query performance)
• 🟢 Suggestion — install Capacity Metrics app and set CU threshold alert at 80% before throttling occurs

Exam Tips

• Monitoring Hub = primary place to check pipeline/notebook/dataflow run status — not in workspace item list; dedicated monitoring view
• CU throttling = capacity exceeded — use Capacity Metrics app (from AppSource) to identify heavy workloads and throttling incidents
• Smoothing = Fabric spreads burst usage over 10-minute rolling window — a short Spark job's CU burst is amortized; reduces but does not eliminate throttling risk
• Notebook Spark monitoring — each cell shows duration; click "Spark jobs" link for DAG and task-level metrics (stage input/output bytes, shuffle)
• Pipeline failure → check Activity Run details in Monitoring Hub — shows per-activity input, output, and error message; most specific failure info
• Admin portal Usage Metrics — tracks who uses which items (reports, datasets); useful for capacity planning and identifying unused items