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Overview Of Data Gateway In Power BI

Overview

In this article, we will discuss the following.

  1. Definition of Gateway
  2. Prerequisites to Configure Power BI Gateway
  3. Important Points Before We Start Installation of Data Gateway
  4. Two Modes of Gateway Installation
    1. Personal Mode
    2. Recommended Mode (Enterprise Mode)
  5. Difference between Personal Mode and Recommended Mode

What do we mean by Data Gateway?

  • A Gateway is software that will provide a facility to connect our on-premise data sources (like SQL Server, SharePoint, and many more) with online services like Power BI.
  • A gateway acts as a Gatekeeper.
  • Gateway listens to requests from clients and grants access only if authentication is successful.
  • A gateway uses encryption to store sensitive information like passwords.
  • A gateway will encrypt and compress all the data to pass through it.

Prerequisites to Configure Power BI Gateway

Before we start the installation of the Power BI Gateway, we need to consider the following prerequisites.

Minimum System Requirements

.Net Framework Minimum 4.5
Operating System 64 – bit Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 or later

Recommended System Requirements

CPU 8 Core
RAM 8 GB
Operating System 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 or later


Important points before We Start Gateway Installation

  • It is not feasible to install Gateway on the Domain Controller machine.
  • We cannot install a gateway on a computer, such as a laptop, that may be turned off, asleep, or not connected to the internet.
  • We can install a gateway on 64- 64-bit machines only.
  • We can install up to two on-premise gateways on a single machine. (One for Personal Mode and one for Recommended Mode)
  • We cannot install more than one gateway running on the same mode on the same commuter.

Ex. We cannot install two Personal mode gateways on a single machine or we cannot install two Recommended mode gateways on a single machine.

For Personal mode, we can install and configure one on-premise gateway for one Power BI user.

Ex. If I have installed one gateway with Personal Mode on Machine 1 with user “Jack", now, if I install a gateway with Personal Mode on Machine 2 with the same user “Jack”, it will not be allowed or it will take the most recent installation setting of machine 2.

For the Recommended mode, we can configure more than one on-premise gateway with a single user. We can manage all the gateways using Power BI Online Services.

Two Modes of Gateway Installation

Power BI provides two modes of Gateway when we install Gateway.

  1. Personal Mode
  2. Recommended Mode

Gateway

Now let’s elaborate on each term in detail.

Personal Mode

Let’s take a real-life scenario. Suppose you have a large Excel file, One SQL SERVER database, and one Oracle database. You are the only one who is responsible for using data sources and preparing Power BI reports. You don’t want to share this thing with anyone other in an organization. At that time, you can go with the Personal Mode.

  • Allow a single user to connect to the data source
  • Sharing of Data sources is not allowed.
  • It can be used with Power BI Online.

Recommended Mode

Let’s take a real-life scenario. Suppose you have different data sources, like Large Excel files, SQL Server, and Oracle data sources. Now, you want to share the same data source with all your vendors, and people from an organization. At that time, you can go with Recommended or Enterprise Mode.

  • Allow multiple users to connect to the data source.
  • Can be used with – Power BI, Power Apps, Flow, and Azure Logic Apps.

Difference between Personal Mode and Recommended Mode for Gateway Installation

Now, let’s check the difference between Personal Mode and Enterprise (Recommended) Mode.

Personal Mode Enterprise (Recommended) Mode
Sharing is not allowed Sharing is allowed
Best for single-user Best when you want to share data sources with an Organization
Only use with Power BI We can use it with – Power BI, Power Apps, Flow, Azure Logic


Conclusion

This is how we can get started with Data Gateway in Power BI. In my next articles, we will talk about the installation process of Data Gateway with Personal Mode and Recommended Mode.


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