Power BI Embedded - is an premise gateway required?

[Meragao]

Hi there,

We have a potential use case where we have an on premise Windows Forms Application front end with a SQL Server back end.  We would like to generate dashboards using PowerBI Embedded from this set up.  Do we need to use a Power BI Gateway in this scenario or is there another way of linking the two? I know in the old version of Power BI Embedded Gateway wasn't supported but it's not clear if it is needed or can be used for the new version of Power BI Embedded.  Can anyone help clarify?

[v-jiascu-msft]

Hi @Meragao,

The Power BI gateway is a bridge that connects the on-premises data and the cloud data, the Service. So it isn't a component of Power BI Embedded. 

Though I don't know much about your application, I can give a simple view of Power BI Embedded. Firstly, we get everything ready on the Service. Then embed the contents in the custom application using APIs. The Power BI Gateway is used in the former part. 

Please refer to developer/embedding for more details about Power BI embedding. 

Best Regards,

[Meragao]

Thanks for the reply, so, just to clarify you're saying that the gateway would be required to connect on prem data to the cloud?

[v-jiascu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @Meragao,

Yes, for example, if you have an Excel file on your computer, the Power BI Service doesn't know its location and can't reach it either. Now the on-premises Gateway will do its job as a bridge. If the data is on the cloud service like Azure or AWS, the on-premises Gateway isn't necessary. Because Power BI Service can access it directly if the Service has permissions.

Best Regards,