Power BI Report Server - Power BI Pro Licensing

[MMartin]

Good morning everyone,

I have a couple of doubts,

The first is: is a Power BI Pro license necessary to publish a report on PBI Report Server? The Power BI (cloud) service has not been configured within the report server configuration, since we do not want our data to go to the cloud. Therefore, when I say publish, I say save the pbix inside the local server exclusively.

The second is: To obtain Report Server, you need a Power BI Premium license (it can also be done through SQL Server EE + SA), for this it is necessary to have a tenant. What would be the minimum license to obtain the tenant of the organization and to buy Power BI Premium?

Best Regards,

Martín

[bradsy · Accepted solution]

Hi Martin,

I am not a license expert, but here is what I understand.

Power BI Report Server and Power BI Premium are two different products. A Pro license is not required for either one of them as both are somewhat standalone purchases. 

Power BI Pro is for accessing the shared content in the Power BI Cloud.

Power BI Report Server you are buying an on premise server which you own entirely.

Power BI Premium you are buying capacity in the cloud. As part of the Premium workloads, you can turn on Paginated Reports. Since you own the capacity, you can allow anyone you like to access the content.

In the link below, you can find a whitepaper with somemore detail.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi-premium/

[MMartin]

Thanks for spend your time in this dude,

I still have a doubt, I understand what you tell me. I put you real stage:

You have a power BI Premium license, but you don't want your data to go to the cloud (you don't want to use the Power BI Premium functionality, nothing that has to do with the cloud). Then, you install Power BI Report Server. In the event that you were going to use the On-premise functionality alone and exclusively, you would not need a Power BI Pro license. Is this correct?

Best Regards,

Martin

[petbot]

Had the same question to our licence specialist few weeks ago

Power BI Report Server is an on-premises server that enables Power BI Pro users to publish Power BI reports and distribute them broadly across the enterprise, without requiring report consumers to be licensed individually per user.

So, for publishing report to Report Server you will need at least one PRO licence if you dont want to violate EULA.

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Report-Server/On-prem-Report-Server-and-Pro-Accounts/td-p/440115

https://blog.coeo.com/power-bi-licensing-deployment-options

[bradsy]

Correct. On premise functionality does not require a Pro License.

One option you have with the Cloud offering and keeping your data on premise is to use the Power BI Gateway.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/gateway/