Accessing on-premise databases with Power BI Desktop and Power BI Pro licences

[Anonymous]

Hi, First time posting here with what is hopefully a straight forward query around the best way to access on-premise data sources from within Power BI.

Our proposed setup for Power BI will be as follows.

Power BI Pro licences to enable users to share content which will be accessed via Power BI on the cloud.

Dedicated machine on-premise where the Data Gateway will be installed to enable access to existing SQL Server and Oracle databases, and SSAS Cubes.

In order to create successful data sources on the Data Gateway we will obviously need to create some firewall rules to enable connectivity between the Gateway machine and the Database servers.

Our dev approach would be

• User creates report/dashboard locally
• User publishes report/dashboard to cloud
• Other users access the report/dashboard from the cloud

My questions are:

1. When using Power BI desktop, can we choose to use the data sources created on the Gateway?
2. Would we need to recreate the firewall rules from local desktops to the datavase servers or would the fact that we have already setup a data source on the gateway be sufficient?
3. Would we need local database client drivers installed to enable access to the data?

Many thanks in advance

[mwegener]

Hi @Anonymous 

If I answered your question, please mark my post as solution, this will also help others.
Please give Kudos for support.

[v-jayw-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

1# You can connect datasets on Power BI Service through Get Data -> Power Platform -> Power BI datasets.

2# They need separate rules.

3# Depends on database, for example, you need to install Oracle client to connect Oracle database.

Best Regards,

Jay

Community Support Team _ Jay Wang

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[mwegener]

Hi @Anonymous ,

I would consider the Power BI desktop and gateway connection separately.

1. When you create a new record, create the connection in Power BI Desktop and activate it later in the service

2. separate firewall rules

3. local database client drivers for Power BI Destop and Data Gateway Server