Enterprise Gateway - VPS vs Local machine(laptop)

[anob1224]

Good day!

I have a gateway on my personal laptop  (connected to 300Mbps internet speed) which I also used to create a PBI report. I got it published on a workspace and able to refresh it using the gateway and It is able to finsih at around 1 hour with around 200Mbps speed showing at the Device Manager.

We have another gateway setup on a VPS. It is has 1Gbps speed. When we refreshed a report that uses the gateway in the VPS, the Device Manager only has 40Mbps utilization and the refresh eventually fails at 2 hours.

I have already enabled the StreamBeforeRequestCompletes on the VPS gateway and exlcuded it on the microsoft defender. Any reason why it would not utilize the high speed internet or is there anything that I am missing here?

Thank you!

[v-jtian-msft]

Hello,Greg_Deckler ,thanks for your concern about this issue.

Your answer is excellent!
And I would like to share some additional solutions below.
Hi,@anob1224 .I am glad to help you.
According to your description, you are confused about the differences in the performance of power BI reports in different gateway environments.
In fact I think it is generally related to a variety of aspects

1. Network bandwidth utilization
As Greg_Deckler suggested, bandwidth utilization is one possible reason. Based on the information you provided, it seems that the VPS network is faster, but the actual utilization may be affected by the network configuration or bandwidth limitation. It is recommended to check the network settings of the VPS to make sure there are no bandwidth limitations.
You can get the appropriate information by checking the network utilization and local gateway logs.
URL:
Monitor and optimize on-premises data gateway performance | Microsoft Learn

2. The configuration and optimization of the gateway itself will also affect the actual refresh efficiency, you can try to configure gateway clustering

By configuring a gateway cluster, you can better utilize the high-performance network and hardware resources of the VPS to improve the refresh efficiency of Power BI. When a gateway cluster is configured, if one gateway in the cluster has a problem, another gateway can take over the refresh task to ensure that the data refresh is not interrupted.
URL:
Manage on-premises data gateway high-availability clusters and load balancing | Microsoft Learn
 
3. Try to start with power BI reports, such as optimizing report models
Complex relationships and inefficient queries can slow down the refresh speed, you see also try to check and optimize your query logic and data model. Reduce some unnecessary operations.
URL:
Optimization guide for Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

4. If your report supports incremental refresh (the data source supports query folding and there are Data/Time type fields in the dataset for partition processing), you can configure incremental refresh to reduce the amount of data that needs to be processed on each refresh.
5. Using XMLA Endpoints (for Premium workspaces, Premium Per User)
Using XMLA Endpoints allows you to manage your report's semantic model in a variety of ways
Customized refreshes, data monitoring and management, and the refreshes performed in this way are not affected by the license's maximum number of refreshes per day (scheduled refreshes and scheduled refresh timeouts).

URL:
Advanced incremental refresh and real-time data with the XMLA endpoint in Power BI - Power BI | Micr...
The Evolution of XMLA Endpoint in Power BI: A Comprehensive Guide (insightsarena.com)
Announcing refresh history updates for models utilizing XMLA endpoints | Microsoft Power BI Blog | M...
Power BI XMLA Endpoint - Step by Step Examples, How to Use? (excelmojo.com)

I hope my suggestions give you good ideas, if you have any more questions, please clarify in a follow-up reply.

Best Regards,

Carson Jian,

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[anob1224 · Accepted solution]

Thank you @Greg_Deckler and @v-jtian-msft ! I was able to find the solution. This also is in you 1st point at Network utilization.

To make it simple, there is a "Network port test" option in the gateway. This test provides a list of port where is was successfull/failed. Unfortunately the VPS we got failed some of the ports 146/150. We had to find another VPS that would pass all the port test.

Troubleshoot the on-premises data gateway | Microsoft Learn

[Greg_Deckler]

@anob1224 What is the CPU and memory configuration of each? If you are CPU constrained, that bottleneck could explain the low bandwidth usage.

[anob1224]

Hi @Greg_Deckler! 

My laptop is 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1145G7 @ 2.60GHz 1.50 GHz with 16 GB Ram

The VPS is an 8 core 2.8 GHz base speed with 16 GB Ram, during refresh it is only at 36% CPU utilization and 29 % RAM utilization.