Detailed introduction about Power BI Gateway

Data Science, AI and ML
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Power BI Gateway

Power BI Gateway is a software which is required to access data situated in an on-premises network. Gateway plays a role like as a gatekeeper for the on-premises data source. If anyone wants to access on-premises data from the cloud or web-based app, that request goes through the gateway. The gateway attends all the connection requests, and access is granted based on their authentication and requirements.

Gateway does not transfer the data from the on-premises source to the client platform. But it directly connects that platform to the on-premises data source. The client can directly access the data from its on-premises location to use it for making a dashboard, reports, and data analysis.

Generally, a gateway is used to facilitate the connection between a single data source and multiple data source to the on-premises data source.

Types of the Power BI Gateway

There are two types of Power BI gateways:

  • Standard Mode
  • Personal Mode

On-premises data gateway (standard mode)

On-premises data gateway allows connection with the multiple on-premises data sources for more than one user. You can use the data in Power BI, Azure Logic Apps, Azure Analysis Services, PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, etc.

You can establish direct connections to multiple data sources only installing this type of data gateway. This data gateway is very helpful for complex scenarios where multiple users need to access various data sources.

On-premises data gateway (personal mode)

The particular mode of on-premises data gateway allows only one user to connect to different data sources. It is helpful when only one person needs to access the data sources. To create reports and the dashboards using Power BI, the user cannot share its access privilege with other users.

Power BI Gateway

Power BI Gateway Architecture

Power BI gateway functions play a role as a mediator between the cloud services and on-premises data sources. The On-premises data gateways run as a Windows service. This Windows service gets registered with the Gateway Cloud Service through Azure Service Bus.

The architecture and working of the data gateway with the help of the diagram given below:

Power BI Gateway

Power BI gateway architecture is divided into three parts:

  1. Cloud services

  2. Gateway services

  3. On-premises data sources

  • According to Power BI, a cloud service creates a query which requires data from an on-premises data source.
  • This query from cloud services goes to the gateway cloud service with encrypted credentials.
  • The gateway cloud services process and analyze the request and then forward it to the Azure service bus. You don’t need to configure azure service bus separately because Power BI manages it by default.
  • The Azure service bus keeps all the requests to be sent forward to the on-premises data gateway. The on-premises data gateway decrypted credentials for the data source and connect the user to the data source.
  • The on-premises data gateway forwards the query sent from the cloud service to the on-premises data source.
  • The data query is executed at a data source that can be SQL Server, SharePoint, files, SSAS, etc.
  • Result of the query is returned to On-premises data gateway by the data source. The On-premises data gateway sends the result back to the cloud service via Azure Service Bus.