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pgroberman
Regular Visitor

Power BI Report Server activation and product key for cloud virtual machine EC2 in AWS

Good morning,

We're managing our cloud infrastructure for some clients. We're using AWS EC2 instances. In particular, we've launched an instance (new virtual machine) with Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Full Locale English with SQL Enterprise 2016 SP1 AMI provided by Amazon.

The instance runs SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition and all licensing is included in the AWS subscription and managed by Amazon. This means that the virtual machine is activated using digital licensing. Using a powershell script, I could obtain a product key but doesn't work when activating Power BI Report Server. For obvious reasons, I don't have access to the MS licensing portal, as it is managed by Amazon.

Bottomline is: we're paying for SQL Server 2016 Enterprise licensing and all related costs, included within the virtual machine subscription.

Anyone could please share experiences activating this product on cloud infrastructure? I've already opened a support ticket with AWS, but they're still scratching their heads 😉

Thanks,

Pablo.

2 REPLIES 2
v-qiuyu-msft
Community Support
Community Support

Hi @pgroberman,

 

I got information from senior engineer below:

 

As per this blog:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlrsteamblog/2017/05/03/introducing-power-bi-report-server-for-on-...

 

“Power BI Report Server delivers the capabilities we made available in January 2017 as the Technical Preview for Power BI Reports in SSRS. Power BI Report Server is an on-premises server that enables Power BI Pro users to publish Power BI reports and distribute them broadly across the enterprise, without requiring report consumers to be licensed individually per user.”  -  So it says that it does not need the PBI licensing.

 

“SQL Server Enterprise Edition per-core customers with active Software Assurance (SA) will also have the rights to deploy Power BI Report Server through SA entitlement.” – This is the answer for this. They Need the SA Licensing.  You can find more details on this page: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/reportserver-find-product-key/

 

I believe customer needs to contact to AWS to get the License. Or if he is Global Admin in PBI, he would be able to get key from there as described in the above blog.

 

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

Community Support Team _ Qiuyun Yu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.
v-qiuyu-msft
Community Support
Community Support

Hi @pgroberman,

 

Thanks for your question.

 

I have escalated this issue to senior engineer, will let you know if there are any update.

 

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

Community Support Team _ Qiuyun Yu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

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