PowerBI Report server set up , cost and performance

[manalla]

Hi,

We are planning to use Power BI Report server. I have gone through Premium and SQL+SA understanding. Few things i would need to clarify better:

Case 1:

We alreaday have SQL EE+SA and currenlty using 2014 SQL version. We have a DB server and an APP Server.

Quest1 - Should I get Report server installed on App Server or DB Sever? Which would give me good performance?

Quest2 - Is it mandatory to install PBI Report Server only on server where SQL installation is present?

Quest3 - when we have SQL EE+SA, will we get PBI Report server for free or any cost involved?

Case 2:

We only have SQL EE 2014 SQL version, but no SA.

Quest1 - How do we get SA for exisitng EE edition we have?

Quest2 - Once we get SA, Can we install PBI Report server on 2014 SQL or do we need 2016 SQL server? I understand that PBI Report server will hold its DB on a SQL instance. So is 2014 ok? or we need 2016 SQL server?

Case 3:

We dont have SQL Server being used in another project. So need to go with Power BI Premium:

Quest1 - Where should we install PBI Report server? Will PBI Report server work with our SQL server totally?

Which is cheaper Power BI Premium or SQL EE + SA?

Thanks

[v-yulgu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @manalla,

SQL Server is used to host the report server databases. A SQL Server Database Engine must be available after setup and before you configure the database for the report server. SQL Server 2014 is OK. The SQL Server Database Engine instance can be a local or remote instance. That means you can install Report Server on the machine where has SQL Server installed, or install it on a different server.

If you have purchased Power BI Premium, within the Premium settings tab of the Power BI admin portal, you will have access to your Power BI Report Server product key. If you have a SQL Server Enterprise SA agreement, you can get your product key from the Volume Licensing Service Center.

Reference: Install Power BI Report Server

Hardware and software requirements for installing Power BI Report Server

For other questions:

"We only have SQL EE 2014 SQL version, but no SA. How do we get SA for exisitng EE edition we have?" Please ask your question on SQL Server forum.

 "Which is cheaper Power BI Premium or SQL EE + SA?" Please contact with relative support team.

Best regards,
Yuliana Gu

[manalla]

Hi @v-yulgu-msft,

Thanks a lot for your reply. One more question on performance:

"The SQL Server Database Engine instance can be a local or remote instance. That means you can install Report Server on the machine where has SQL Server installed, or install it on a different server."

Will we have any performance impact in any terms - if we install PBI report server on APP Server (where SQL is not present, but we will point to SQL instance from our DB Server)?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Hi, as for performance probably yes, we have tried to install Power BI reporting services in a different box but needed to ensure that each core of the VM that Power BI report server will run is licensed with the SQL Enterprise with Software Assurance, so we have decided to install this in the same box as the SQL Engine as we can make better use of the CPU cores and we don't have a generous budget to allow us to go and pay for more cores at this stage, which would be nice if we did.

[DaveW]

Can you clarify that the performance would be improved running Report Server on the 2nd VM separate to the VM running SQL Server?

I thought that the EE and SA licensing only had to be in place for the VM running the SQL server.

I have installed the Report Server on a 2nd VM and the one thing I noticed when I published a Power BI report, it needed a Windows login to authenticate to the SQL Server even though the Report Configuration Server had a service account configured to connect to the SQL Server