Does executing a Data Profile in Microsoft Purview consume Data Governance Processing Units (DGPUs)?

Question

Hi,

I'm looking for clarification on how Data Profiling is billed in Microsoft Purview Data Governance.

From the documentation, I understand that:

• Data Quality usage is billed using Data Governance Processing Units (DGPUs).
• The Enterprise Data Management meter starts when running Data Quality and Health Management actions.

Documentation:

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/data-governance-billing
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/unified-catalog-data-quality

However, I couldn't find an explicit statement answering the following:

Does each execution of a Data Profile consume DGPUs?

Or is DGPU consumption only associated with Data Quality rule execution?

If Data Profile execution does consume DGPUs:

• Is there a fixed DGPU charge per profile execution?
• Or does the DGPU consumption vary depending on the volume of data and processing performed?

Could someone from Microsoft please clarify this or point me to the relevant documentation?

 

Answer 1

Hi @Anitha Ganesan

Based on the current Microsoft Purview documentation, here's what can be confirmed:

• Data Profiling is part of the Microsoft Purview Data Quality capability in Unified Catalog.
• Data Quality usage is billed using Data Governance Processing Units (DGPUs), and the billing documentation states that the Enterprise Data Management meter starts when you run data quality and data health management actions.
• A DGPU is a managed compute unit used for compute-intensive capabilities such as Data Quality and Data Health Management, and its consumption varies depending on factors such as the workload, data volume, source type, and processing performed.

However, the documentation doesn't explicitly state whether executing a standalone Data Profile is billed as a separate DGPU-consuming operation or whether its compute is included within the broader Data Quality processing.

Similarly, while Microsoft publishes DGPU examples for data quality rule execution (for example, DGPU per rule per run), it doesn't publish a profiling-specific DGPU rate or billing example. Therefore, we can't definitively state whether each Data Profile execution incurs DGPU consumption or provide a fixed DGPU cost based solely on the published documentation.

If you would like to validate the behavior in your own environment, you can:

• Review Usage Monitoring (Preview) in Microsoft Purview after running a Data Profile job to observe DGPU consumption.
• Check Azure Cost Management for the Enterprise Data Management meter to correlate the usage.

References

• https://learn.microsoft.com/purview/data-governance-billing
• https://learn.microsoft.com/purview/purview-billing-models
• https://learn.microsoft.com/purview/unified-catalog-data-quality

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

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