Quick Tips: On-premises Data Gateway, Network Ports Test

Network Ports Test in On-premises Data Gateway

The latest version of On-premises Data Gateway February 2019 (3000.1.257) has been released on 1st March 2019. The release note is quite short and it doesn’t really provide a lot of information. At least that’s the case as at today (6 March 2019).

There is One new feature however, that I found very interesting is the “Network Ports Test” under the “Diagnostics” tab. This is an important feature I believe that gives you the ability to deal with your network administrators or your security officers much easier. You can now easily run a test directly from the gateway UI and pass the test results to your network admins if any of test steps fails.

As you can see in the screenshot you can click on “Start new test” and then open the completed test results to send them back to your networking team is needed.

That was really quick wasn’t it?

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Check this out if you want to learn about processes involved with implementing On-premises Data Gateway across organisations and how to com up with an implementation plan.

WARNING: The above post is a really long one.

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On-premises Data Gateway for Azure Analysis Services

On-prem Data Gateway for Azure AS, How it works DemoFrom April 2017 onward we can use On-premises Data Gateway for Azure Analysis Services. This means  you can connect your Tabular Models hosted in Azure Analysis Services to your on-premises data sources through On-premises Data Gateway. In this post you learn how to setup and configure the On-premises Data Gateway as well as how to configure Azure Analysis Services to connect to the on-premises database(s) via the gateway.

Requirements/Assumptions

  • You have an Azure subscription
  • You already have an up and running instance of Azure Analysis Services (AAS)
  • You already installed and configured the latest version of On-premises Data Gateway
  • Your instance of Azure Analysis Services, your instance of Power BI Service and your On-premises Data Gateway are all in the same “Region” (Check Prerequisites section below for more details)
  • This post covers the most common scenario which doesn’t involve Kerberos, Proxy Server, OKTA etc…

Reading: If you are not that familiar with On-premises Data Gateway then I encourage you to read this and for more in-depth read this article. You may also watch this video from Adam Saxton discussing On-premises Data Gateway.

Prerequisites

As stated in the “Requirements” section, it is important to check if your instances of Azure Analysis Services, Power BI Service and On-premises Data Gateway located in the same “Region”.

The reasons behind that are:

  • Your On-premises Data Gateway MUST be installed in the same Region as your Power BI Service sits in. Otherwise your Power BI cannot see the gateway, therefore, you’re unable to schedule automatic data refresh in Power BI Service
  • To get the best performance and more reliability, you have to create On-premises Data Gateway Resource in Azure side in the same region as your Azure Analysis Services lives in

But, in some cases people created their Power BI account a long time ago and perhaps they didn’t set the right region for their Power BI Service to sit in. Now, they need to create an instance of Azure Analysis Services, but, due to their organisation privacy and security, they don’t want to (or perhaps not allowed to) create the instance of Azure Analysis Services in the region that their Power BI tenant sits in. So they would prefer to create the Azure Analysis Services in another region. In that case, it is recommended to install a new instance of On-premises Data Gateway in a separate server and change the “Gateway Region” during the installation.

To check the “Region” of your instances follow the steps below:

Power BI Service Region:

  • Login to your Power BI Service
  • Click the question mark on top right side of the page
  • Click “About Power BI”

Continue reading “On-premises Data Gateway for Azure Analysis Services”