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ThomasGebets's avatar
ThomasGebets
Frequent Visitor
1 year ago
Solved

Confusion about Power Bi Report Server Licensing

I'm struggling to understand the cost of the Power Bi On-Premise solutions. We have a use case, where most user will use the data online in the Power BI Embedded version (with a embedded capacity...
PBI On-Prem license
Power BI Report Server
  • V-yubandi-msft's avatar
    V-yubandi-msft
    1 year ago

    Thanks for your response ThomasGebets ,

    Yes, Microsoft licensing for SQL Server, including the Enterprise Edition, is core based and requires a minimum of 4 cores per physical server. So, even if you're only using 2 cores, you'll still need to license 4, effectively doubling the cost in smaller setups.

     

    This requirement applies whether you're deploying Power BI Report Server via SQL Server Enterprise Edition with Software Assurance or using SQL Server on its own.


    Helpful Reference:
    SQL Server 2022—Pricing | Microsoft

     

    Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution.

V-yubandi-msft's avatar
V-yubandi-msft
Community Support
1 year ago

Hi ThomasGebets .,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Community. d_gosbell , has explained this well, but to confirm. Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) does not allow deployment or usage of Power BI Report Server.

For on-premises scenarios with Power BI Report Server, you’ll need one of the following.

  1.  Power BI Premium Capacity (P1 or higher). 
  2. SQL Server Enterprise Edition with Software Assurance (SA).

If you're planning to support 500+ small customer deployments, Power BI Embedded (A SKUs) might be a more cost-effective and scalable option.'

FYI:

 

If my response solved your query, please mark it as the Accepted solution to help others find it easily.

And if my answer was helpful, I'd really appreciate a 'Kudos'.

  • ThomasGebets's avatar
    ThomasGebets
    Frequent Visitor
    1 year ago

    Thank you for the answer to both of you d_gosbell and V-yubandi-msft . As said, we have the Embedded SKUs solution already and this works great for 90% of users. Still, we have the need to deploy multiple offline-only environments for customers due to data security reasons.

    Basically, our report (and also the report server) should be deployed automatically and embedded via iframe during the offline-installation of our application. Then, there are only one or two users/admins that can check their data that is generated by their users on-premise (all completely offline). I hope that makes sense. 

     

    * So if have the offline-only requirement for those environments, Premium SKUs or SQL Enterprise versions for EACH of those environments/setups would be required, correct? So that would be: x offline-only customers, x SQL Enterprise licenses (one for each offline-only customer)

    * Is there an option of purchasing SQL Enterprise License as a life-time license or is this subscription based only?

     

    Thanks for your help!

    • V-yubandi-msft's avatar
      V-yubandi-msft
      Community Support
      1 year ago

      Yes, SQL Server Enterprise can be purchased as a one-time  license. However, to use Power BI Report Server, you will also need Software Assurance (SA). Without SA, the license does not include the rights to run Power BI Report Server.

       

      Thank You.