Power Bi Service (Pro license) vs Power Bi Embedded

[jfenico]

Hello all,

Currently we have a system in place where I am able to create custom Power Bi reports for customers based off of data from our application that is kept in a MySQL database. I've been doing some reading regarding Power Bi Embedded and if I'm correct, we would be able to offer reports to more customers through the Power BI service directly inside our Application. This would cut out the sometimes difficult conversation of how Power BI licensing works to our customers as well as offer them the ability to view dashboards from a single location (our application instead of browsing out to app.powerbi.com). I do have a few questions.

1. With Power Bi Embedded, is the Power BI gateway still needed? If not, how does the information get refreshed? How does the information from our database get populated into the report?

2. How does scalability work? Right now if a customer has 1 application server, the report slightly differs if a customer has 2 application servers.

3. Would there be 1 App Workspace for all customers, or an individual Workspace for each customer to manage security/permissions?

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @jfenico

Please see the answers to your question below.

1. With Power Bi Embedded, is the Power BI gateway still needed? If not, how does the information get refreshed? How does the information from our database get populated into the report?

GQ - You would upload and configure your reports as you currently do in an App Workspace. This would include how you refresh the data, which would happen via the Gateway.

2. How does scalability work? Right now if a customer has 1 application server, the report slightly differs if a customer has 2 application servers.

GQ - In terms of scalability you would be using either Power BI Premium or the Power BI Embedded A SKU's which you could easily increase or decrease the sizing depending on the requirements.

3. Would there be 1 App Workspace for all customers, or an individual Workspace for each customer to manage security/permissions?

GQ - It depends on how you want to configure it, I would recommend using Row Level Security, which will mean all the data is in one App Workspace. And one report to maintain and make updates to. You would then handle Row Level Security via your own application.

Here is a great demo, which you can test to see how it all works: https://microsoft.github.io/PowerBI-JavaScript/demo/v2-demo/index.html