when are gateways necessary?

Question

I have been reading and hearing conflicting information about when gateways are necessary. Is there an official knowledge article that discusses when they are necessary?

My immediate need is to refresh the data in a Power BI report (i.e., refresh its dataset) that sources from an Excel file that lives in an on-prem file share. If it matters, ideally, I'd like it to be a scheduled refresh, but I'm okay with it being a manual refresh. Do I need a gateway for this?

Further, I have 2 more Power BI reports in dev. Both use an ODBC connection to ServiceNow (cloud, not on-prem). The first one's connection is to be in import mode (i.e., dataset gets created). The second one's connection is to be in DirectQuery mode (i.e., no dataset gets created). Is a gateway needed for either mode?

galshaked · Answer

The gateway allows access to data that in on-premise, and which Power BI Service cannot access from outside your network. The gateway will connect internallly to the data sources, update the data and send it to Power BI Service.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-gateway-onprem

anonymous · Answer

Is it safe to say that a gateway is&nbsp;only required for on-prem sources (i.e., not cloud)?&nbsp; That is, it has nothing to do with the connection mode being import or DirectQuery?

galshaked · Answer

The way I understand it, yes.&nbsp;

anonymous · Answer

That implies that putting Power BI on top of ServiceNow (i.e., a cloud source) via ODBC in import mode (by default, as ODBC doesn't support DirectQuery) would not require a gateway for refreshes.&nbsp; However, I am being told by my peers that a gateway is required for refreshes in this scenario.&nbsp; (Unfortunately, currently, I don't have access to this ODBC driver.&nbsp; So, I can't test this.)&nbsp; Are they wrong?

anonymous · Answer

Anonymous&nbsp;we have ServiceNow in the cloud and cannot connect to Power BI because our ServiceNow is allowing only certain IP Ranges. Could your colleagues be mentioning this because you have a similar setup?&nbsp;Would you have time to talk about the ServiceNow and PowerBI Integration in your environment?

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when are gateways necessary?

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