Preparing On-premises Data Gateway Implementation Plans for Enterprises

Definitive Guide to On-premises Data Gateway Implementation
Photo credit: Kayla Duhon

If you are a Business Intelligence consultant working on Power Platform, Azure Logic Apps and Azure Analysis Services landscape, you probably know that On-premises Data Gateway cab be one of the most essential parts of your engagements with your customers. In many cases, installing On-premises Data Gateway can be a one-man-band job but in many others, it requires teamwork effort. Either way, it can go smoothly if you already have a well-thought implementation plan otherwise, it can quickly turn into a beast that can exhaust the whole implementation team and the customer for some days.

In this post, I do my best to provide you with some guidelines that can help you with your On-premises Data Gateway implementation planning. This post may look rather long, and some of the points are generic, but it is worthwhile mentioning them. Consider the following points before, during and after the engagement:

  • Understanding the use cases
  • Culture of the engagement
  • Environments (Dev, UAT, Prod)
  • Communication
  • Security
    • Corporate/environmental firewalls
    • Proxy Servers
    • Identity Access Management
  • People
  • Documentation
  • Installation, configuration, and testing

Here is a diagram of the important points that you should consider:

Implementing On-premises Data Gateway
Implementing On-premises Data Gateway

Use cases

You need to understand the use cases of On-premises Data Gateway (Standard Gateway) for your customer. If they need the gateway for their Power Platform, Azure Logic Apps, Azure Analysis Services or all of them. This is important as you either need to have access to your customer’s Power BI Service or Azure Portal or both, or you need to assist your customer to configure On-premises Data Gateway in Azure or in Power BI Service. The next points are:

  • Accessing customer’s Azure Portal and/or Power BI Service: The customer to decide whether to create a new account with sufficient rights for you or give you the credentials of an existing account. It is important to make sure you can access all environments and you have necessary rights to install/configure the gateway
  • You assist/consult a person at customer side with the implementation: you need to make sure you communicate with that person and see if he/she understands the requirements before the implementation date. Send them a calendar invitation beforehand to make sure he/she is present at that date. Always ask for a backup person just in case of an emergency happening to the primary person.
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Connect Live Power BI to SSAS Multidimensional

Connect liv Power BI SSAS Multidimensional

In one of my previous posts I explained how to use Power BI on top of your SSAS Multidimensional using Data Import Scenario. You can also find definitive explanation about “Managing Analysis Services Multidimensional Model” here. In this post I show you how to connect live your SSAS Multidimensional model with Power BI. “Connect Live SSAS Multidimensional” means making a Direct Connection from Power BI Desktop to your SSAS Multidimensional instance.

As it is a direct connection you’ll be able to see/use the following SSAS Multidimensional objects:

  • Cubes
  • Perspectives
  • Measure Groups
  • Measures
  • Dimensions
  • Dimension Attributes
  • Hierarchies including Parent Child

In this post you’ll learn:

  • How to connect live from Power BI Desktop to SSAS Multidimensional
  • Creating reports using SSAS objects like hierarchies
  • Publishing your reports from Power BI Desktop to Power BI Service

Requirements

To be able to successfully create and publish your reports using Power BI Desktop on top of SSAS Multidimensional you will require:

  • The latest version of Power BI Desktop (Current version is 2.31.4280.361 64-bit (January 2016))

Power BI Desktop Version

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Power BI Enterprise Gateway, Everything You Need to Know

On-premises Data Gateway (aka Power BI Enterprise Gateway) is release a while ago (2 Dec. 2015), but, with the latest release on 22 Dec. 2015 Power BI Enterprise Gateway now supports live connections to both SQL Server Analysis Services Multidimensional and Tabular models as well as SAP HANA. In this post I’ll explain lots of important aspects of the Power BI Enterprise Gateway including installation,  configuration for different data sources including SSAS Multidimensional, Tabular and SQL Server Database and much more. If you need to have the lowest possible latency then you need DirectQuery/Explore Live feature on top of your on-premises data sources. The good news is that Power BI Enterprise Gateway now supports all following data sources:

  • SQL Server Database
  • SQL Server Analysis Services Multidimensional
  • SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular
  • SAP HANA

    In this article you’ll learn how to install and configure Power BI Enterprise Gate Way, how to manage different live data sources, how to create reports on top of live data sources and more.

  • Note 1: If you want to use DirectQuery to connect to your on-prem SQL Server Database OR Explore Live your SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular model then you might not need to install and use the Power BI Enterprise Gateway. In those cases you can install Power BI Personal Gateway to connect to an instance of SQL Server OR install Power BI Analysis Services Connector to connect to your on-prem instance of SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular model rather than installing the Power BI Enterprise Gateway. But, bear in mind that selecting the best gateway is really depending on your use cases, your data sources and the environment you’re working on.

  • Note 2: The Power BI Enterprise Gateway and Power BI Personal Gateway CAN be installed on the same machine.

    Downloading and Installing Power BI Enterprise Gateway

    You can download the gateway from the dedicated download page for On-premises Data Gateway on Microsoft website or after logging into Power BI Service with your account, click on “Data  Gateway” from the download menu:
    downloading on-premises data gateway from Power BI service

    OR you can go straight to the gateway page then download the Power BI Gateway – Enterprise (Preview):

    Direct Link to Download Power BI Enterprise Gateway

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Browsing Cubes Remotely from Excel Trough a VPN Connection without Using Windows Authentication

Technically when you connect to another network through a VPN connection you can see all allowed machines on that network. So it is easy to connect to a SQL Server instance using SQL Server authentication. However, I’m explaining this part for some of you guys that might be new to connecting from Excel directly to a database on SQL Server and create flashy reports on Excel.

But, what about connecting directly from Excel to a remote Analysis Services instance without using Windows Authentication? You’re right! I’m saying you can connect directly from your own Excel to a remote SSAS server without using windows authentication. Well, technically there is no SQL Server Authentication mode available for Analysis Services. So what does that actually mean when I say “without using windows authentication”? If you’re interested in finding the answer keep reading this article.

Scenario:

You’re working as a BI consultant, you’ve been told that a client needs to have some simple reports on Excel as follows:

·         You should connect to the client’s server using a provided VPN connection

·         The VPN connection could be established through a Windows VPN, Cisco VPN etc. so the VPN client or the port and protocol used don’t actually matter

·         Microsoft Excel is NOT installed on the client’s server

·         You’re NOT allowed to install Excel on the server

·         As it is a costly process the client will not setup a virtual machine in their network so that you can remotely connect to it and install Excel then connect to their SQL Server/Analysis Services instances

·         There is no trust relationship between your network and the client’s network, so your domain user name and password could not be authenticated on the client’s network

·         The client needs to have some reports on Excel on top of a SQL Server database and OLAP cubes on Analysis Services (SSAS)

·         You have the right to run an application as administrator on the remote server

·         You need to connect to the remote server directly from your own Microsoft Excel installed on your machine

·         The client also provided a remote desktop access to the server

·         On the remote desktop SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is installed

·         In the remote SQL Server your account is a member of the “securityadmin” server role so you can create a new SQL Server Login

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