Power BI Personal vs Enterprise Gateway

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

For someone who is new to Gateway connections, how do I know which ones to use? What is the difference between the two? If I am the only person developing the solution, I would assume I would need a personal gateway.

I have connected to the SQL DB in Power BI desktop, but now to schedule a refresh in service, it says I have to validate the connection and I would assume it would be via the Power BI gateway. What are the requirements for me to have to be able to successfully do this?

Thanks,
Ron

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous 

The types of gateways are divided into On-premises data gateway and On-premises data gateway (personal mode).

What is a gateway:https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-onprem

The difference between the two gateways:https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-personal-mode#on-premises-data-gateway-vs-on-premises-data-gateway-personal-mode

On-premises data gateway is suitable for multiple users, On-premises data gateway (personal mode) is suitable for a single user (only the staff who creates the report), Microsoft recommends using an enterprise data gateway instead of a personal gateway to connect a dataset to an on-premises data source.

The use of the gateway depends on the data source connection mode and the type of data source you use.

• Connection mode

When your data source connection mode is Import, you can use either On-premises data gateway or On-premises data gateway (personal mode).but when your data source connection mode is Direct Query or Live Connect, you can only use On-premises data gateway

• Types of data sources

1. When your data source is a cloud data source, you do not need to use a gateway to refresh this data set. You can use the data source credentials part of the data set settings to manage the configuration of these data sources..
2. When your data source is a local data source, you must configure a gateway connection for this data set before you can enable the refresh schedule or perform on-demand data refresh.
3. When your data sources are local and cloud data sources, a gateway is required, and you also need to enable the checkbox "Allow user's cloud data sources to refresh through this gateway cluster" in the Gateway Cluster Settings.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/refresh-data#accessing-cloud-data-sources

You are connecting to the SQL DB in Power BI Desktop, which is equivalent to a local data source, so you need to find the relevant data set and the gateway in the data set option, if not, you can click Add to gateway, enter the data source setting option of the gateway management page, enter the relevant information to verify to configure the data source, and then select and apply to start the configuration plan refresh.

Here are the steps to configure the gateway:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-sql-tutorial#connect-a-dataset-to-a-sql-server-database

Best Regards,

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[arvindsingh802]

Enterprise Gateway is always better until you are using R/Python script in your reports, it give you ability to share same Gateway and Datasources with other team members at any point in time

To add data source follow Add or remove a gateway data source - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Make sure Server and database name is exact same as in your pbix file else it will not recognise it as same data source

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