Explanation For optimal compression and performance of clustered columnstore tables, a minimum of 1 million rows per distribution and partition is needed. Before partitions are created, dedicated SQL pool already divides each table into 60 distributed databases. Example: Any partitioning added to a table is in addition to the distributions created behind the scenes. Using this example, if the sales fact table contained 36 monthly partitions, and given that a dedicated SQL pool has 60 distributions, then the sales fact table should contain 60 million rows per month, or 2.1 billion rows when all months are populated. If a table contains fewer than the recommended minimum number of rows per partition, consider using fewer partitions in order to increase the number of rows per partition.