On-prem enterprise gateway installation

[pbix]

Hi All, 

I have several on-prem tabular/multi-dimensional models and I'm just trying to get my head around the Power BI Enterprise/On-Prem Gateway so that I can automatically refresh this data nightly/enable DiretQuery.

Where is the Power BI enterprise gateway typically installed? I assume I cannot/should not install it on my developer machine?

Does the computer with the Gateway installed on have to be always switched on so that on-prem data can always be accessed via the Power BI Service?

Thanks!

Pbix

[v-yuezhe-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @pbix,

In your scenario, you can install on-premises gateway on a machine that can be left running all the time. Once the gateway is installed and connected, you are able to make use of it to connect to multiple on-premises data sources on multiple machines. Just make sure that the machine installing on-premises gateway and the machines having multiple data sources are joined into a same domain.

In addition, as stated in this article, you are able to add third-party data sources such as IBM db2, MySQL and so on to the on-premises gateway.


Thanks,
Lydia Zhang

[ankitpatira]

@pbix Typically yes it should be installed on same machine as your data source. Yes computer with gateway should always be on otherwise gateway becomes invisible to power bi service. Here is the article to help you get started with data gateway.

[pbix]

Hi @ankitpatira,

Thanks for that. I read the helpful link you provided earlier but it was a little bit vague for me. 

May I ask a follow-up question? Which machine would you typically install on if you had multiple data sources? I'm just thinking about a situation where we have multiple databases on multiple machines, or if the data source was managed by a third party? (e.g. so I couldn't install the gateway on the same machine as the data source)

Thanks!

pbix