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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
5 years ago

Is a cloud data source better than on-prem?

Greetings. Apologies if this question comes through twice. I hit the Post button and it appeard succesful but I can't find the first one, so here goes....   Total PBI noob here so please bear with ...
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Anand24's avatar
Anand24
Super User
5 years ago

Hi Anonymous ,

 

I'm assuming you mean DBs like SQL Server, Teradata, etc. when you say on-prem and Cloud DBs like AWS Redshift, Azure DB, Snowflake, etc. when you say Cloud. 

 

As an overview of connectivity, it's always better to have the data on cloud instead of on-prem. It's the modern connectivity method and is more productive than on-prem. I've worked a lot on Snowflake and Teradata and it's a no-brainer for me to opt Snowflake(Cloud DB) over TD(On-Prem) due to the ease of use and faster dataset refresh time. 

 

Another important point to note with on-prem is the tediosness one might face in setting data gateways for refreshing on-prem data in Power BI Services and the various dependencies on it like availability of gateway, are gateway clusters required, server/system availability, etc.

 

 

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  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    5 years ago

    Thanks Anand24 -- yes that's what I meant by on-prem and cloud. However there are some distinctions -- our cloud DB is a Azure SQL DB, which has some limitations compared to a real SQL DB on-prem. If we were to upgrade this to a managed instance those limitations would be gone, but that's not about to happen. 

     

    It should also be noted that we have another environment that does point to on-prem for it's refreshes and they run without issue, but that's on a Premium license. That said the gateway thing wouldn't be an issue for us. It was done once, it could be done again I'm sure. 

     

    All said, it would be tough for me to argue that we should keep the source data in the cloud, unless this goofy shared capacity/ resource license thing could bite us from a performance standpoint. I'd like to see it stay there, but need something concrete for a reason.