Forum Discussion
On-Prem vs. Cloud?
Hi everyone,
My BI team is considering to switch from on premises/HPE VM to Azure Cloud. At this point we have tried both on premises/HPE VM options and we have encoutered issues like space on C drive, not being able to schedule automatic refresh, speed for running queries and getting the data, low memory error message etc.
In terms of connection type we are using PBI direct query trough ODBC to the database, the ammount of queried data being really huge (app 7 million lines).
Do you think that switching from the above mentioned infrastructures to Azure Cloud would be a smart move?
Thank you,
Lorena
I have used both Lorena, previously PBI Report server on prem, and now most recently as a service at my new job in Azure. For the amount of data you are talking you could use either, also I don't envisage any issue with bringing 7 million rows into the cloud either through data factory setup or on premise gateway, we are doing billions of rows without issue with Data Factory. There are so many other reasons to switch to the cloud, mainly it is a more featured product and you are constantly getting the latest and greatest updates. Also providing you provision the cloud portal correctly (memory, disk space etcc) in the setup phase you will not have any of the performance issues you describe. Auto refresh in power bi as a service is just standard and should work without issue. The main issue for you would be cost. When I last checked, Power BI on prem (report server) has the big advantage of being free providing you are using enterprise edition sql server, all you have to pay is a token amount for hte power bi desktop user licenses, if you shift to the cloud you will need to pay, how much will depend on what options you choose.