Installing Power BI On-Premises Data Gateway in another Region

[CHAUHAN812]

Hello,

We currently have an On-Premises Data Gateway installed on an Azure VM, configured with my account. Since our Power BI tenant’s data location is North Europe (Ireland), the gateway was automatically bound to that region during installation.

Now, I’m looking to install a second gateway on another Azure VM, but this time targeting the US region (specifically East US). However, when I attempted to change the region during setup, I received an error stating that Power BI service connectivity may be impacted by this change.

Could you please advise on the correct approach to install a new gateway under a US-based environment, while ensuring compatibility with Power BI?

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @CHAUHAN812 , Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.

We find the answer shared by @Poojara_D12  is appropriate. Can you please confirm if the solution worked for you. It will help others with similar issues find the answer easily.

Thank you @Poojara_D12  for your valuable response.

[Poojara_D12 · Accepted solution]

Hi @CHAUHAN812 

The warning you’re seeing is expected behavior and confirms that Power BI gateways can only operate within your tenant’s data region, which in your case is North Europe (Ireland). Even if you install the gateway on an Azure VM hosted in East US, Power BI will still bind it to the Ireland region automatically — this setting cannot be overridden. The reason is that Power BI enforces strict regional binding between gateways and tenant data to maintain compliance, performance, and data sovereignty guarantees. Opening specific network ports on your Azure VM won’t resolve this issue; those are only required to allow secure outbound communication from the gateway to the Power BI service.

If your goal is simply to connect to US-based data sources (like SQL, Databricks, or Azure resources in East US), the correct and supported approach is to install the gateway on that US VM but let it remain bound to the North Europe region — Power BI will still work correctly. The gateway acts as a secure bridge, transferring data from the US location to your tenant in Ireland, though with potential latency. If your intent is to host and process Power BI content entirely within the US (to meet compliance or performance goals), you’d need a separate Power BI tenant with its home region set to the US, since each tenant’s gateways and datasets are region-locked. In summary, you cannot assign a Power BI gateway to a different region than your tenant’s; network port changes won’t bypass this, and the only architectural alternative is to use or request a tenant in the desired region.

[CHAUHAN812]

[CHAUHAN812]

Are you suggesting that this can be resolved by opening specific ports on the Azure VM where I’m installing the gateway? I attempted to install it by switching the gateway to the US region, but received a warning related only to Power BI—other tools seem to work fine. My primary goal is to use it for Power BI.

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @CHAUHAN812 , hope you are doing great. May we know if your issue is solved or if you are still experiencing difficulties. Please share the details as it will help the community, especially others with similar issues.

[CHAUHAN812]

Hi @v-hashadapu,
Thank you for your response. I’m still working on getting this resolved. I reviewed your approach, but it seems quite challenging to implement. Could you suggest an alternative solution if possible ?

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @CHAUHAN812 , Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.

When installing a new On-Premises Data Gateway in East US for Power BI, do not add it as a member of your existing North Europe cluster. Instead, create a new, separate gateway (or gateway cluster) and register it to your tenant, but ensure this instance is dedicated to US-based data sources. This approach preserves regional affinity, avoids cross-region performance penalties and matches Microsoft’s recommended architecture. The gateway should have all necessary outbound HTTPS connectivity, network ports opened and reside physically close to your US data sources for best performance. If you use Power BI Premium, align gateway region with the Power BI capacity region. Avoid clustering gateways across continents and always test for latency and reliability before deploying to production.

[lbendlin]

Not a great idea. Gateway cluster members should be in a location that is physically close to the majority of the data sources they serve.  Network latency is a big factor in gateway performance and having cluster members in different regions will lead to sub-optimal performance.

[tayloramy]

Hi @CHAUHAN812, 

From the documentation I've read, you will get that warning anytime you install a gateway into a region that is not your tenant's home region. 

In my experience, it usually works fine as long as you have all the correct ports open on the gateway server. It is important that the gateway region matches the capacity region, but as long as those match I've not had any issues so far. 

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