License problem for example separate usage of the cores

[python]

We are an international medical device manufacturer. Nowadays, we are developing the business to provide our customers(hospitals) BI reports. Since the hospitals usually don’t want to put their data in cloud, so we are considering using Power BI report server for our customers. I know that to license the report server, we need purchase Power BI Premium Capacity.

So the questions are like below:
1. Assume that we have two customers: A and B. We will do the purchase and buy Power BI Premium P1, so we get 8 cores to use on premise. We are going to install Power BI report server on a 4-core server of Customer A, and install Power BI report server on another 4-core server of Customer B. That will use up the 8 cores. So this separate usage for our customers, does it violate any license or policy?

2. As I understand, in the scope of Power BI report server we need Power BI Pro user to publish and share reports and the recipient is free to view the report. But we have an administrator, he will only perform the operations like modifying the access permission of reports, deleting reports and moving reports from one folder to another. Is it possible for free user to do those operations?

3. If we are not going to publish any reports to cloud, we just upload reports to Power BI reports server. Do we still need Power BI Pro?

4. Can power bi report server work with standard version of sql server? Or to use power BI report server, we must use enterprise version of sql server.

Thank you in advance.

[Seth_C_Bauer · Accepted solution]

@python

1. Based on the response here -> http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Report-Server/Power-BI-Report-Server-Licensing/m-p/299910#M2097 and the fact that you can scale out the deployment to multiple servers I would say as long as you don't exceed the core licensing you should be fine.

2. The license applies to those that are building reports. This isn't even enforced, its just a license requirement. I don't see how an admin of the Report Server would require a license in this case if they aren't building PBI reports.

3. Yes, Only for the authors or people that are building the reports.

4. I am not aware of any restrictions. The full requirements doc is here - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/system-requirements I've deployed to a Standard box. I think the only stipulation in that regard would be an edition that supports RS.