Solved: SQL 2016 on Power BI Gateway server

Anonymous · ‎06-20-2019

Hi,

An IT employee at my organization asks me if it is possible to install SQL 2016 on the server where our Data Gateway is running on. Is this okay to do? And if not, why not? I need to explain why it is not recommended.

GuyInACube said in a video that this was not recommended, but doesn't say why.

Our data gateway only pushes data once per day at night.

Anonymous · ‎06-20-2019

@Anonymous It largely comes down to resource usage. If the gateway will only ever refresh at night, then you likely have minimal to no impact. But, if you know you will scale, and more reports will start to require refresh then depending on what the SQL server is doing there might be some contention, delays or failures. The recommendation for a seperate gateway machine is so that as you scale up and add more and more reports that require more resources to refresh that you won't impact your reports. Outside of that, there is no issue. I've had both scenarios work well (dedicated machine vs. shared)

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Anonymous · ‎06-20-2019

@Anonymous It largely comes down to resource usage. If the gateway will only ever refresh at night, then you likely have minimal to no impact. But, if you know you will scale, and more reports will start to require refresh then depending on what the SQL server is doing there might be some contention, delays or failures. The recommendation for a seperate gateway machine is so that as you scale up and add more and more reports that require more resources to refresh that you won't impact your reports. Outside of that, there is no issue. I've had both scenarios work well (dedicated machine vs. shared)