Azure Analysis Services: using as PowerBI data source - anyone used it?

[OneWithQuestion]

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/analysis-services/

I am very interested in this new offering but had some questions:

1.  How does data refresh work... do we just use a normal Power BI data connection to Tabular?

2. How does SSAS Azure pull data if that data is ON PREM... do we use a standard enterprise gateway so it can query our local SQL server for the data source to refresh the model?

3.  Has anyone played around with this yet?  Any gotchas or technical benefits with how it works with Power BI vs using an SQL SSAS Tabular IaaS VM in Azure?  (I understand what the Azure SSAS offers as benefits, I mean does it behave differently with Power BI in anyway or are there no differences in data pulls, etc, etc...)

Thanks!

[v-sihou-msft]

@OneWithQuestion

1. We can open normal connection to Azure Analysis Services. Just put the Azure SSAS server connection string into server name.

 

2. Azure Analysis Services pulling on premise data via Azure SSAS on-premise gateway. You need to install it so that you can deploy your Tabular project onto Azure SSAS server.

3. I just tested with Azure AS data source. Currently it's only supported to connect live. It will throw invalid server name error when using import mode. We don't need to refresh data since it's live connection. And for cloud data, you don't need to configure Enterprise Gateway on Power BI Service.

For more detail information, please refer to Azure AS document below:

Announcing Azure Analysis Services preview

Analysis Services documentation

Regards,

[robrien6]

Can azure SSAS tabular (connect live) be used in conjunction with azure power bi embedded?

[vanessa]

@robrien6

I don't think that's currently possible.

Check this link. It says supported data sources for direct query are Azure SQL DB & DW.