Create your own Microsoft Fabric Test Environment (based on a Microsoft365 Developer Tenant)

You heard all the hype messages , read all tweets & posts about the public preview announcement of Microsoft Fabric after the MS Build 2023 Conference?
You really want to test Fabric on your own, but your Power BI / Fabric Admin does not allow you to test it in your company tenant?

I want to test Fabric… is there an easy (and cost-effective aka free) way to do this?

There is an easy way on how to test Microsoft Fabric in your own (dev) environment – for free! And event better: now only for you but also for – in total 25 users!

Yes – you can create your own Microsoft 365 tenant and test Fabric there

In my previous blog post I provided you with the steps on how to create your own Microsoft 365 test tenant for free! This one comes with Microsoft 365 E5 licenses for 25 users and that one includes a Power BI PRO license for everyone of these users.

First, please login in with the admin user of your M365 developer tenant. What I would recommend is to create a new browser profile.

Head over to https://app.powerbi.com to launch the Power BI / Fabric portal.
We need to check some settings before we activate the Fabric trial (Settings -> Admin Portal)

Check that both settings are enabled in your M365 tenant – a) to allow users to create Fabric items and b) that users can try Fabric paid tenants (aka. to enable a Trial capacity)

Check these settings to enable the Fabric trial

Next – enable the Fabric trial capacity.

Start your Fabric trial with this button

And now – the final button to start your Fabric trial

Success – The Fabric Trial is activated!

Et voila – the Fabric trial is activated

Hint: Fabric capacities are free for use until 1st October 2023 (see this blog post for more details)

How can I use and try Fabric now? Let’s create a workspace and assign the Fabric capacity to it

Create a new workspace

You can only use Fabric if you assign a capacity to a workspace – similar to the concept of the Power BI Premium-Per-User or Premium Capacity concept.

In our case, we assign the Fabric (per-user) trial capacity to this new workspace.

In order to use Fabric, the workspace needs to be backed up with a capacity.

The new Fabric workspace gets the same icon (diamond) like a Power BI Premium workspace. And with that you are able to create new Fabric items in this workspace, testdrive all the features you want to test and prototype your new analytic solution in your own Fabric dev environment.

Stay tuned for some other blog posts where I will provide you with some ideas how to easily start with your Fabric tests!

Happy Fabric-ing,

Wolfgang