Forum Discussion
Power BI Dataflows with Virtual Gateway
Hi,
is there a chance, that in near future virtual data gateways will be available for Power BI dataflows and data marts?
It's quite confusing, that go-to database solution for Power BI forces users to use external tool (to use Power Platform Dataflows instead) in order to use dataflows in scenarios as Azure SQL Database accessible only by VNET. I am aware, that virtual data gateways work just fine with Power BI datasets, but in my opinion that's definitely not enough. Substituting Power BI Dataflows with Power Platform Dataflows forces Power BI Developers to drop such functionalities as Power BI Deployment Pipelines for dataflows and many other Power BI-specific things.
And what makes it even more confusing, is that Power BI Dataflows currently can establish a connection with such data source during initial configuration process (and fetch data preview), but immediately drops the connection after attempting to save/refresh dataflow. Virtual gateways can't be selected within PBI Dataflows' Power Query Online settings (on-prem only).
4 Replies
Hi Anonymous ,
Virtual network (VNet) data gateways (Microsoft-managed) eliminate the overhead of installing, updating, and monitoring on-premises data gateways for connecting to data sources associated to a VNet. VNet data gateways also provide the capability of connecting from Power BI to applicable Azure data sources using AAD Single Sign-On for Direct Query(currently not available on the on-premises data gateway).
More details: Announcing VNet Connectivity for PBI Datasets (Public Preview) | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI
About virtual data gateways will be available for Power BI dataflows and data marts, You can create an idea here and vote for it. And wait for users with the same needs as you to vote for you to help make it happen as soon as possible.
Best Regards
Community Support Team _ Polly
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.
Thank you for this answer.
This idea has already been submitted: Microsoft Idea (powerbi.com)
I hope we will get this feature soon.
Thank you for the partial answer. VNET integration is supported for Power Platform Dataflows yet not for Power BI dataflow.
Are the Power Platform Dataflows a different code base? If not why is the same integration not offered to Power BI DataFlows?
If I understand, correctly, Power Platform Dataflows require a premium connector (EXTRA COST) to connect to an Azure SQL Server. So why should I suggest to my customers to spend more money if they want to secure a connection to Power BI. Yes, I can suggest using a VM and private endpoints. Let me repeat MORE MONEY, on top of Power BI Premium costs.
Can someone help me understand the situation? Or do I suggest that its just Microsoft want to charge as much as possible?
It's also worth to mention, that with sole support for on-prem gateways Power BI Dataflows and Data Marts you probably can't use features such as computed entities with Power Query Online. So without support for virtual gateways in Power BI Dataflows we loose a lot of nice-to-have things, that are available for cloud-based services such as Azure SQL Database.
So, Microsoft, please add full support for virtual data gateways to Power BI. It's very confusing, because it's already available for Power Platform Dataflows, which feature nearly identical implementation of Power Query.