Help with Power BI Desktop Connection to PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS via SSH - Connection Failed Error

[D17]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to connect Power BI Desktop to a PostgreSQL database hosted on Amazon RDS using an SSH tunnel. However, I keep encountering the following error:

"An error happened while reading data from the provider: 'A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond'"

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

1. I changed the Public Accessibility setting on the Amazon RDS instance to "Yes" to make it accessible externally.
2. I've verified the security group settings to allow inbound connections on the PostgreSQL port (5432) from my machine’s IP.
3. I've tested connecting to the database using pgAdmin and it works fine.
4. I’m using SSH tunneling because the database is in a private subnet.

Despite all this, Power BI fails to connect. Could anyone suggest the steps I might be missing or need to recheck? Are there any specific configurations in Power BI Desktop, RDS, or SSH that I need to focus on?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi, @D17 

Make sure your SSH tunnel is configured correctly. You can use PuTTY or OpenSSH to create tunnels. Also check your security group settings again to make sure that inbound traffic from your local machine IP address to port 5432 is allowed. At the same time, make sure that there are no local firewall settings blocking the connection.
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL enforces SSL connections. Make sure Power BI is configured to use SSL when you try to connect. 

Power BI requires an Npgsql driver to connect to PostgreSQL. Make sure the driver is installed and configured correctly on your machine. You can check this post:

Solved: Connecting to PostgresSQL hosted on AWS RDS? - Microsoft Fabric Community

When setting up a connection in Power BI, use the appropriate connection string format.  You can refer to the following post:

Solved: Connect Desktop Power BI to AWS RDS postgreSQL - Microsoft Fabric Community

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Yongkang Hua

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