SSL Certificate Error: Power BI Desktop to AWS RDS Connection Fails

[manoj_0911]

Hi all,

I’m encountering an issue while trying to connect Power BI Desktop to an AWS RDS SQL Server instance.

• Error Message:
  "A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error: 0 - The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted.)"

• What I’ve Tried:

  1. I can connect successfully to the same AWS RDS instance using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
  2. I updated Power BI Desktop to the latest version.
  3. I tried looking for the 'Trust Server Certificate' option in Power BI Desktop, but I couldn’t find it in the SQL Server connector.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue, and how did you resolve it? Any guidance on properly configuring Power BI to trust the AWS RDS SSL certificate would be appreciated.

Thank you!

[manoj_0911 · Accepted solution]

Hi Team,

I wanted to share an update on the AWS RDS connection issue in Power BI, which I had posted on the Power BI community earlier. I was able to resolve the problem by adding an environment variable `PBI_SQL_TRUSTED_SERVERS` to my system. This allowed Power BI to trust the RDS instance, and the connection was established successfully.

If anyone is facing similar issues, here’s a general approach:

1. Add the `PBI_SQL_TRUSTED_SERVERS` environment variable on the machine where Power BI is running.
2. Set its value to include your RDS server (e.g., `your-rds-instance-url:port`).
3. Restart Power BI and try connecting again.

This resolved the SSL certificate trust issue that was causing the error.

Feel free to reach out if you need further details!

Best regards,
Manoj Prabhakar