Connecting Power BI Desktop to on premises data

[PBI_USER]

Hi there!

We're doing a proof of concept with Power BI right now, a cloud subscription with premium license. Our sourcesystems, two datawarehouses, are residing on premises. With Power BI Service you can reach them via a secured data management gateway, but how about Power BI Desktop?

We've sited our databases in our highly secured and zoned datacenter. There are no possibilities to connect from a local desktop direct to a sited database. All connections have to be decoupled, there's a so-called steppingstone needed to connect to our databases. Examples of a steppingstone are citrix, vdi's, proxy's, etc.

What options do we have to connect from Power BI Desktop to our sited databases?

Regards!

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@PBI_USER,

What type of database do you connect to? You are able to connect to the database from Power BI gateway, right? If so, you can install Power BI Desktop on the same machine with Power BI gateway. 

Both Power BI Desktop and Power BI gateway are clients. Since you can successfully connect to database from gateway, you should be able to connect to the database from Power BI Desktop.

Regards,
Lydia

[PBI_USER]

Hi,

We're connecting to SAP HANA and SAP BW. It should be possible to install PBD on the same server, but the issue is that we're not allowed to connect from a local desktop directly to a sited database or server. A form of steppingstone is required. So we can distribute Power BI Desktop with Citrix or a VDI, but that's not optimal in our situation. I'd like to install it as a local desktop application, but i'm not familiar with the possibilities to decouple the PBD-application from the sited databases. I was under the assumption that the gateway would fix this for me, but unfortunately...

I hope to find someone who has dealt with this before.

Regards,

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@PBI_USER,

What error message do you get when connecting to the data source in Power BI Desktop?

Regards,
Lydia

[PBI_USER]

Hi @v-yuezhe-msft

I don't get an error, because I didn't try it. The IT department decided to site all databases in a zoned datacenter, so I know for sure that I can't reach any database at all from my local workstation. I'm looking for something to decouple my workstation from the database, something like a service, application or proxy or something to place in between my workstation and the concerning databases. So we can bypass a citrix solution.

Regards,

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@PBI_USER,

The gateway also requires connectivity to the data source. If the data source is not accessable from Power BI Desktop, the gateway is not be able to connect to it.

Regards,
Lydia

[PBI_USER]

Hi @v-yuezhe-msft,

The gateway wíll be able to connect to the datasaource, that's not the problem. It will be used by Power BI service, the gateway will decouple the cloud environment from our on premises datasources. So far so good.

However, Power BI Desktop (local installation) has to be decoupled as well. My question is; how can we do this without using Citrix... Is there a gateway-like service (microsoft or 3rd party) that we can install in the same zone as our source database, so that the local install can be decoupled from the sited databases (by a proxy or something)?

Regards!

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@PBI_USER,

I am not sure how you use on-premise gateway to connect to the data source. But as long as you can add the data source within the gateway, you should be able to use same connection string in Power BI Desktop. And the Desktop can be installed on the same machine with gateway.

Regards,
Lydia