Power BI Personal Gateway, Five Things You Must Know

When we are talking about using a new technology we need to understand it first. Power BI Personal Gateway is not an exception.  Despite you can easily install the Power BI Personal Gateway, knowing the following important points is crucial. I believe the following 5 points are significantly important to prevent you getting into troubles with the installation process as well as using the gateway:

• Power BI Personal Gateway is only available on 64-bit Windows operating systems
• Once you install Power BI Personal Gateway you don’t need to install another one as just one gateway works for any number of supported data sources
• You CANNOT install the Power BI Management Gateway on the same machine as Power BI Analysis Services Gateway
• If you’re trying to install the Power BI Personal Gateway on a network having Active Directory make sure that the account you’re using to install the Power BI Personal Gateway is able to “Logon as a Service”. In some cases the “Logon as a Service” policy is prevented on Active Directory for security reasons. The “Log on as a Service” should be applied to those accounts that are NOT under an Active Directory. So even if you are using a Local Account you should make sure that the local account is added to the local security policy “Log on as a Service”. If the account used to install the Power BI Personal Gateway is banned from the “Log on as a Service” policy you’ll get “Service ‘Data Management Gateway Service’ (DIAHostService) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.” error message.

• Permission types applied to your Windows account affects how the Power BI Personal Gateway is installed and how it works in Windows. Unlike Microsoft Data Management Gateway which was used to refresh on-premises datasets from Power BI 365, you don’t need to have administrator rights. So when  you logged into Windows:
• If your Windows account has administrator permissions then the Power BI Personal Gateway will be installed as a “SERVICE”.
1. As long as the machine and the service are up and running your scheduled refresh will work. So you don’t have to be logged into Windows at refresh time.
2. If you change your Windows account password then you’ll need to change it in the Power BI Personal Gateway as well.
• If your Windows account doesn’t have administrator permissions then the Power BI Personal Gateway will be installed as an “APPLICATION”.
1. Even if the machine hosts the Power BI Personal Gateway is up and running, you still need to be logged into Windows at scheduled refresh time.
2. As the Power BI Personal Gateway is installed as an application it will always run using the account and password you’re currently logged in with. So if you’re not logged into Windows the data won’t refresh and the scheduled will fail.