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The Microsoft Fabric (Preview) trial includes access to the Fabric product experiences and the resources to create and host Fabric items. The Fabric (Preview) trial lasts until Fabric General Availability (GA), unless canceled. After GA, the Fabric (Preview) trial converts to the GA version and is extended for 60 days.
This document helps you understand and start a Fabric (Preview) trial.
Important
Microsoft Fabric is currently in PREVIEW. This information relates to a prerelease product that may be substantially modified before it's released. Microsoft makes no warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to the information provided here.
Existing Power BI users
If you're an existing Power BI user, you can skip to Start the Fabric (Preview) trial.
Users who are new to Power BI
For public preview, the Fabric (Preview) trial requires a Power BI license. Navigate to https://app.fabric.microsoft.com to sign up for a Power BI free license. Once you have a Power BI license, you can start the Fabric (Preview) trial.
Start the Fabric (Preview) trial
Follow these steps to start your Fabric (Preview) trial.
Open the Fabric homepage and select the Account manager.
In the Account manager, select Start trial.
If prompted, agree to the terms and then select Start trial.
Once your trial capacity is ready, you receive a confirmation message. Select Got it to begin working in Fabric.
Open your Account manager again. Notice that you now have a heading for Trial status. Your Account manager keeps track of the number of days remaining in your trial. You also see the countdown in your Fabric menu bar when you work in a product experience.
Congratulations! You now have a Fabric (Preview) trial that includes a Power BI individual trial (if you didn't already have a Power BI paid license) and a Fabric (Preview) trial capacity.
Other ways to start a Microsoft Fabric (Preview) trial
If your Power BI administrator has enabled the preview of Microsoft Fabric for the tenant, you have another option for enabling a Fabric (Preview) trial. When you try to create a Fabric item in a workspace that you own (such as My Workspace) and that workspace doesn't support Fabric items, you're prompted to start a Fabric (Preview) trial. If you agree, your Fabric (Preview) trial starts and your workspace is upgraded to a trial capacity workspace.
What is a trial capacity?
A trial capacity is a distinct pool of resources allocated to Microsoft Fabric. The size of the capacity determines the amount of computation power reserved for users of that capacity. The amount of compute resources is based on the SKU.
With a Fabric (Preview) trial, you get full access to all of the Fabric experiences and features. You also get OneLake storage up to 1 TB. Create Fabric items and collaborate with others in the same Fabric trial capacity. With a Fabric (Preview) trial, you can:
- create workspaces (folders) for projects that support Fabric capabilities.
- share Fabric items, such as datasets, warehouses, and notebooks, and collaborate on them with other Fabric users.
- create analytics solutions using these Fabric items.
You don't have access to your capacity until you put something into it. To begin using your Fabric (Preview) trial, add items to My workspace or create a new workspace. Assign that workspace to your trial capacity using the "Trial" license mode, and then all the items in that workspace are saved and executed in that capacity.
To learn more about workspaces and license mode settings, see Workspaces.
Capacity units
When you start a Fabric (Preview) trial, Microsoft provisions one 64 capacity unit (CU) trial capacity. These CUs allow users of your trial capacity to consume 64x60 CU seconds every minute. Every time the Fabric trial capacity is used, it consumes CUs. The Fabric platform aggregates consumption from all experiences and applies it to your reserved capacity.Not all functions have the same consumption rate. For example, running a Data Warehouse might consume more capacity units than authoring a Power BI report. When the capacity consumption exceeds its size, Microsoft slows down the experience similar to slowing down CPU performance.
There's no limit on the number of workspaces or items you can create within your capacity. The only constraint is the availability of capacity units and the rate at which you consume them.
You're the capacity owner for your trial capacity. As your own capacity administrator for your Fabric trial capacity, you have access to a detailed and transparent report for how capacity units are consumed via the Capacity Metrics app. For more information about administering your trials, see Administer a Fabric trial capacity.
End a Fabric (Preview) trial
You may cancel your trial from the Account manager. When you cancel your free Fabric (Preview) trial, the trial capacity, with all of its workspaces and their contents, is deleted. In addition, you can't:
create workspaces that support Fabric capabilities.
share Fabric items, such as machine learning models, warehouses, and notebooks, and collaborate on them with other Fabric users.
create analytics solutions using these Fabric items.
Additionally, if you cancel your trial, you may not be able to start another trial.
Administer user access to a Fabric (Preview) trial
Power BI administrators can enable and disable trials for paid features for Power BI and Fabric. This setting is at a tenant level and is applied to all users or to specific security groups. This one tenant setting applies to both Power BI and Fabric trials, so Power BI administrators should carefully evaluate the impact of making a change to this setting.
Each trial user is the capacity admin for their trial capacity. Microsoft currently doesn't support multiple capacity administrators per trial capacity. Therefore, Power BI administrators can't view metrics for individual capacities. We do have plans to support this capability in an upcoming admin monitoring feature.
Considerations and limitations
I am unable to start a trial
If you don't see the Start trial button in your Account manager:
Your Power BI administrator may have disabled access, and you can't start a Fabric (Preview) trial. Contact your Power BI administrator to request access. You can also start a trial using your own tenant. For more information, see Sign up for Power BI with a new Microsoft 365 account.
If you're an existing Power BI trial user, you don't see Start trial in your Account manager. You can start a Fabric (Preview) trial by attempting to create a Fabric item. When you attempt to create a Fabric item, you're prompted to start a Fabric (Preview) trial. If you don't see this prompt, your Power BI administrator may have disabled the Fabric (Preview) feature.
If you do see the Start trial button in your Account manager:
you might not be able to start a trial if your tenant has exhausted its limit of trial capacities. If that is the case, you have the following options:
Request another trial capacity user to share their trial capacity with you.
Reach out to your Power BI administrator to create a CSS request to increase tenant trial capacity limits.
In Workplace settings, I can't assign a workspace to the trial capacity
This known bug occurs when the Power BI administrator turns off trials after you start a trial. To add your workspace to the trial capacity, open the Admin portal by selecting it from the gear icon in the top menu bar. Then, select Trial > Capacity settings and choose the name of the capacity. If you don't see your workspace assigned, add it here.
What is the region for my Fabric (Preview) trial capacity?
If you start the trial using the Account manager, your trial capacity is located in the home region for your tenant. See Find your Fabric home region for information about how to find your home region, where your data is stored.
What impact does region have on my Fabric (Preview) trial?
Not all regions are available for the Fabric (Preview) trial. Start by looking up your home region and then check to see if your region is supported for the Fabric (Preview) trial. If your home region doesn't have Fabric enabled, don't use the Account manager to start a trial. To start a trial in a region that is not your home region, follow the steps in Other ways to start a Fabric (Preview) trial. If you've already started a trial from Account manager, cancel that trial and follow the steps in Other ways to start a Fabric (Preview) trial instead.
Can I move my tenant to another region?
You can't move your organization's tenant between regions by yourself. If you need to change your organization's default data location from the current region to another region, you must contact support to manage the migration for you. For more information, see Move between regions.
What happens at the end of the Fabric (Preview) trial?
If you don't upgrade to a paid Fabric capacity at the end of the trial period, non-Power BI Fabric items are removed according to the retention policy upon removal.
How is the Fabric (Preview) trial different from an individual trial of Power BI paid?
A per-user trial of Power BI paid allows access to the Fabric landing page. Once you sign up for the Fabric (Preview) trial, you can use the trial capacity for storing Fabric workspaces and items and for running Fabric experiences. All rules guiding Power BI licenses and what you can do in the Power BI experience remain the same. The key difference is that a Fabric capacity is required to access non-Power BI experiences and items.
Private links and private access
During the Fabric preview, you can't create Fabric items in the trial capacity if you or your tenant have private links enabled and public access is disabled. This limitation is a known bug for Fabric preview.
Autoscale
The Fabric (Preview) trial capacity doesn't support autoscale. If you need more compute capacity, you can purchase a Fabric capacity in Azure.
For existing Synapse users
The Fabric (Preview) trial is different from a Proof of Concept (POC). A Proof of Concept (POC) is standard enterprise vetting that requires financial investment and months' worth of work customizing the platform and using fed data. The Fabric (Preview) trial is free for users through public preview and doesn't require customization. Users can sign up for a free trial and start running product experiences immediately, within the confines of available capacity units.
You don't need an Azure subscription to start a Fabric (Preview) trial. If you have an existing Azure subscription, you can purchase a (paid) Fabric capacity.
For existing Power BI users
You can migrate your existing workspaces into a trial capacity using workspace settings and choosing "Trial" as the license mode. To learn how to migrate workspaces, see create workspaces.
Next steps
- Learn about licenses
- Review Fabric terminology