Power BI Service connection to SQL Server on AWS EC2 instance? And Power BI report migration?

[Dimani]

Hello

We have a SQL Server in AWS EC2, and we are using it Reporting Server to host our Power BI reports.

Most of our reports use SQL Server Analysis Service as their data source.

Now we are exploring if it is possible to use Power BI service to host our reports.

While doing research on the above, I found the following post back in 2017.

Solved: Power BI Service connection to SQL Server on AWS E... - Microsoft Power BI Community

In which, a Microsoft Employee said ...

"As described in this document, to connect to database instance from Power BI service, only Databases in the Cloud and Databases on-premises (SQL Server Analysis Service) are supporte. For other types of databases in your organization, you’ll need to first use Power BI Desktop or Excel to connect to, query, and load data into a data model."

Someone asked a followup question that has not been answered (I have the same question too): does "only Databases in the Cloud" mean only databases in Azure?

If indeed only databases in Azure can be connected to Power BI service, how easy/difficult is it to port our SQL Server and its Analysis Service to Azure? 

We have data loaders, Excel and Power BI reports that access the SQL Server.  Can I assume once we move our database to Azure, we just need to change the host name in the data loaders and other applications that use the SQL Server that now a Azure database?  Or there are more work to be done in order to make them work?

I would like to single out Power BI reports and ask again how much work (or may be minimal) do we need to do to port the reports to Power BI service?

Thanks,

D

[lbendlin]

for the purpose of this discussion your AWS resources are considered "on premise" and follow the same rules.  You need a gateway, and the gateway needs to probably be hosted in AWS too, and it needs to be joined to your AD. 

Just in case - read about VNet gateways.

[Dimani]

Thank you for your information, Ibendlin! 

Good to know that AWS resources are on-prem when we connect them through a gateway.  When seeing the word on-premises, I always think they are running on in-house computers.

[lbendlin]

here "on premise"  means "anything not directly visible from the Azure service"