The Power BI service, gateway connection
To understand the Power BI gateway, you first need to understand how Microsoft has structured its vendor hosted Power BI service (app.powerbi.com). Instead of installing application servers locally or installing an application on a server running in the cloud, Power BI service is fully managed and hosted by Microsoft on its Azure cloud stack.
This architecture means that any published report that needs access to data on your local or corporate network will need a way to securely access that information. And this is where Power BI gateway comes in.
Power BI gateway enables Power BI service to securely reach back into your network for data to display in Power BI service.
Configuration best practices
You will need to install Power BI gateway on one or more computers on your network. In an enterprise environment, we recommend setting up a development gateway server and production gateway server. This practice allows you to test out the monthly gateway software updates and configure new data sources without risk to your production environment. However, these gateways will both connect to your same Power BI service.
These gateways are thought of as clusters by Microsoft. By default, you have a 1-node cluster of each gateway when you install it. You can add additional gateway machines to an existing cluster for higher redundancy and load balancing.
The Power BI gateway supports both importing data on a schedule and running live queries against your local data sources, a capability Microsoft has dubbed DirectQuery. If your organization heavily uses DirectQuery, you should consider running a 2- or more-node cluster for both uptime and performance reasons.
Installation and upgrading
After the Power BI gateway software is downloaded and installed, it will run as a service. By default, it will start running under a dedicated local service account. We recommend you configure a specific domain user account for this service so that permissions can be managed by IT at a domain level, assuming you do this for other service level accounts in your organization.
The application will walk you through logging into Power BI service to add your gateway to a new or existing cluster. We also recommend turning on the HTTPS mode on the Network tab to encrypt your data at all times. Once complete, your gateway will be online and ready for use.
Data source setup and permissions
Data sources can be setup in Power BI service that rely on this data source. When reports are published that reference those data sources, Power BI service will be able to securely reach back into your network for fresh data.
After navigating to the Manage gateways page in Power BI service, you will see a list of your installed clusters. You can then add data sources to each gateway cluster, supplying the data source type and authentication information. The Users tab allows for specific users or security groups to be granted access to the data source for their published reports.
Data sources single sign on
The Power BI gateway can also pass authentication information to the data sources your users will connect to. This means row-level security for users will be enforced at the data warehouse layer because that DW knows who they are. This is typically accomplished using Kerberos and is supported by a subset of Power BI data sources. If your data warehouse supports it and your team manages RLS at the data warehouse level, the end result is that users viewing reports on Power BI service will only see the slices of data they have access to. For example, a store manager would only see information about their store, but a corporate manager would see information about all stores.
Power BI gateway summed up
Power BI gateway is a vital component in any enterprise level Power BI deployment. Considerations around development and production environments, user accounts, VM sizing and redundancy need to be considered when deploying a Power BI gateway.
Sound daunting?
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