PBRS instead of Cognos on premises

[gerald_bauer]

Dear Community!

I am evaluating Power BI Report Server as an alternative to IBM Cognos, which we are using in our company. I've read the forum entries and documentations, but I could not find the answer, if we really could use PBRS.

We are using

1. Three-tier architecture (#1: IIS-Webserver, Windows load balanced ; #2 Windows App-Server, #3 Plain SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn AG)
2. Between the servers are firewalls. Direct access from Internet or Webservers to the SQL server is not possible
3. All servers are windows 2012-R2 based
4. All servers are member of a (local) domain
5. Users authenticate via client certificate or username/password on the domain
6. We need multi-tenant possibility / Row level security (we have many customers who only may see their on data, but on a shared database). RLS is now implemented in Cognos
7. Cubes are designed in Cognos, future implementation in SSAS is possible
8. Customers should not be able to change or add reports, nor should they have direct database connectivity
9. The usage of Cloud services is not allowed (by now)

I successfully installed PBRS on the App server, but it is not accessible from outside. If I install PBRS on the web server, it will be accessible from the internet, but will have no (direct) database connection.

I also tried to make use of the On-premises data gateway, but it wants my Email-address. Why?

So my questions are:

1. Has anyone experience in transforming from IBM Cognos to MS PBRS?
2. Should I use the on-premises data gateway? If yes, where should I install it? (web server, app server, database server?)
3. Where is the correct location for the PBRS (web server ? app server?)
4. Where can I implement RLS/multi-tenant data security?

Best regards,

Gery

[v-yulgu-msft]

Hi @gerald_bauer,

For Power BI Report Server installation, please have a look at: Hardware and software requirements for installing Power BI Report Server

For Row Level security, it is not supported in the October version of the Power BI Report Server, you can implement row level security with windows authentication all the way throught the database for example https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/row-level-security

On Premise data gateway is used for Power BI service. You can configure it on PBIRS.

Regards,

Yuliana Gu

[gerald_bauer]

Thank you for your response!

As October version does not support RLS ,I will implement it on database level.

I read the requirements, but couldn't find a hint for a setup with a perimeter network (no connection between web server and database server).

For the gateway: Your wrote "You can configure it on PBIRS". So you mean, it is possible to use the on premise data gateway together with PBIRS on premise?

[rlooney]

From this discussion question around the PBI custom connectors, we were told that the Power BI Report Server does not support the enterprise gateway at this point in time.

https://github.com/Microsoft/DataConnectors/issues/131

Senturus has a custom connector that will connect Cognos models & cubes over to Power BI to use as a data source.  This will let you leverage all the curated data, user permissions, and audit trails already in place in cognos and the powerful PBI visualizations.  You can deploy to Power BI Service and leverage the enterprise gateway + custom connector to reach back inside your network securely for this data.  For more info or a demo, visit:

https://www.senturus.com/products/analytics-connector/cognos-powerbi/