Let's talk about Power BI Gateway in the Enterprise mode.
So I'm gonna show you how to set up and use the Power BI gateway to connect to on-premise
data, and this time we're not kidding around. We're talking about the enterprise mode
Now this tip I have shared in my earlier videos as well. Just a quick reminder
you do not need a paid Power BI license to use the Power BI gateway.
You can use it with a free Power BI license. Now
this video is part of a series on Power BI gateways
but if you would like to skip the recap and
Jump right to the discussion on Power BI gateway enterprise mode
then just go ahead and jump to the timestamp shown on your screen
right now.
Otherwise I'm stepping into the recap. So in our first video we had talked about
Do you when do you need a Power BI gateway?
And we also talked about ways you can possibly avoid having to use one. In the second video
we covered Power BI gateway in the personal mode. And here you are in this video
we'll be talking about Power BI gateway in the enterprise mode. Now
you can catch all of these videos by clicking in the corner or they're going to be links below in the description
so make sure to watch them all. Now
so we're going to be talking about enterprise mode today Power BI gateway, and let's get started and let me introduce myself
My name is Avi Singh. I'm a Microsoft MVP and a best-selling Power BI author
and if you want to become a Power BI Pro then make sure to subscribe and yes, my friends click that bell
so that you're notified whenever I go live to answer your Power BI questions.
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Alright, let's get going. Yep. So the links in the corner and down in the description so far
We I Gateway. We're gonna go through the recap and we will quickly talk about when do you need a power bi gateway?
And what's this deal between personal mode and enterprise mode?
And again if you want to skip skip ahead to the discussion on enterprise mode how to set it up and everything
That then just jump to the timestamp shown here. So what is a power bi gateway wonder you need it?
It's really simple
Once you publish your models to power bi com then you need a bridge
Which can let the power bi calm cloud model to connect to your on-premise data sources during the refresh and that
Bridge is my friend the power bi gateway
Now if you have tried installing power bi gateway right away
You would see the two options which you are asked to choose from right at the beginning
And the first one there is the top one, which is called the enterprise mode and the next one down
There is the personal mode now the key difference between those two is that the one for the personal mode is really meant for one
Person to use and it think about the power bi model author of the administrator, right? So that's one person
It's he's using that gateway to refresh their own models and they're happy with it
now Of course a hundred a hundred people could be using the reports
It has nothing to do with that focus more on the model authors. Now the power bi Enterprise lets
Multiple authors who are publishing the models up on power bi calm but each one of them doesn't have to set up their own
Personal gateway, they can all have like a central enterprise gateway that they're all connecting through
so it just makes things easier to set up manage and administer now typically enterprise mode gateways are
Often set up by the IT department or the central bi team, but that is you know
It's not always so sometimes if you have big enough, let's say Finance Group or something like that where you have, you know
Maybe five or ten different people authoring and publishing models
It's okay. If certainly for you to set up your own gateway enterprise mode, right?
So, you know, those are the common scenarios where you would find a power bi gateway in enterprise mode
so the first step in getting started with that is of course download and install and
Really the install and download is the same instructions as with a personal mode
So you just go to power bi comm click on that?
I can shown here select data gateway from the download list from from the drop-down list
And that would let you download the Barbie a gateway installer. And again, it's the same installer for both modes
Now, of course the next question is where should you install the power bi gateway now?
What I'll say is at least when you're starting out and you're just testing out things
It's definitely okay to install on a laptop who advise that is
Okay, in fact if it just testing things out
It's also okay and allowed to have two installs on the very same machine
In fact, that's what I have on my machine right now
So I have one install off the personal mode gateway and one install off the enterprise mode gateways and that's okay
But of course you don't want to keep that around for too long
So what the recommended setup is definitely a machine, which is not a laptop, which is always on and preferably
Connected to a wired networks and not going through the wireless Wi-Fi, right? So that'll give you a better performance
It is recommended that if possible you use a machine with a solid-state drive
Because data is often cached on that machine before being sent out the Gateway. I think the term is is spooling
So the hard drive is used as well. I just find interim storage
So solid-state drives can help you out there and the third tip here is that you should locate the data gateway
Physically close to the data source and what I mean by that is in imagine if loops let's try that again
Imagine if your main data source is let's say a specific
Sequel server which hosts your data warehouse and if you were gonna install the power bi gateway might as well do it in a machine
Which is maybe in the same data center now? You probably do not want it on the same machine
Because it well, I mean, yeah, I mean usually your database admin wouldn't be too happy about that anyway
Right, so hey probably won't allow it and probably that's not recommended
But yeah, I'll let be your call
but definitely be aware of that where these machines are physically located and put those two as close to each other as
Possible. So let's get started once you open the installer
We have the same warning as last time we saw in the personal mode video, but this time hopefully well if you're testing it
It's okay, but if you're doing it for real
For keepsies, then you probably do want to pay attention to it
And you're installing it on a computer
Which is always on and with a wired network and this time we're gonna select the option at the top
that one is the enterprise mode and it's gonna say ooh time remaining such an exciting window and then it's gonna
Talk to you about the minimum requirements install location simple stuff and the requirements here. You can take a look at that if you like
Yeah, I'm you know, so recommend it I would probably most machines these days do have 8 gigabytes of memory. Most machines are 64-bit
So you normally shouldn't have to worry about any of that
All right
so and then please wait and after that it comes back and says installation was successful and
Asks you for an email address to use with the Gateway now
for this one you want to sign in using the same account you would use to log in to power bi comm now this would
Become an admin for the Gateway. Don't worry. You can add other admin accounts later on
So if you have other team members who should also be able to administer the power bi gateway?
You can add them later. And again as I said borrow a gateway that
Is no requirement for a paid license. You could be doing this on a free license on the next screen
once you're past that it is gonna ask you to
Configure a gateway. And the first thing that you need there is
The Gateway name now, of course
if you're part of a really large enterprise then maybe not write the beginning but eventually
If there are lots of different teams setting up their own gateways, you may want to come up with a naming convention
You may say that oh there has to be
You know the person who set it up their name has to be there or something like that, you know
So something that kind of keeps things simplified. But again, if you're just starting out, just give it a sensible name
Just don't you know, yeah don't do and call it Mickey Mouse or something, right? That would be my recommendation
Now the next piece here is the recovery key and that one is important. My friend Microsoft isn't getting around here
so gateways once you set up and we're gonna show you the rest of the setup where you you know,
Add the data credentials and stuff and in if you if you lose if you read we have to restore the Gateway
This recovery key is gonna be really helpful
Otherwise, you might have to painfully add all of the data credentials in every again
So to save this in a safe place. All right, and that's it
so that at this point the Gateway is set up on the machine and
now we're gonna switch over and look at it on power bi com, but before that, I'm just gonna
You know bring this model, which he had seen when we were working on Barbie Agia queen personal mode
and again, it's just a simple model with some data connection to
on-premise data sources
So very very local scene on my C Drive excel file and a local sequel server
And what we had done was we had published this online to power bi comm. Let me bring that up and
This was a file and I haven't refreshed it
and at that time we were able to use the
Personal gateway that that's what we had been using but on the next screen if now I go to the same file actually
Let me just let me just go back to that again
So again, I went to the data set that was published and earlier. We were using the power bi
Personal gateway, right? So this was the earlier screen, but now the Refresh screen you can see that it is
Detecting my enterprise gateway as well, but all is not
Well, it is not very happy about it. But I must say that Barbie I it is really good
I mean it really guides you through now this part may be not very
intuitive, but what you need to do my friend is
Click on this arrow so view data sources
And it's gonna say it's basically telling you who so if you expand that it's concealing you hey, what do you need to do? And
Let me try this so if you click on this gear icon
Then it takes you to the Gateway cluster settings. And by the way, the administrators is right there
My account is added you can add out of their accounts
Right, but you don't want to click on that gear icon and I'll tell you why because if you click on the gear icon
Let's see if I can
Show you in a different window
Let's go here. So by the way, I mention this in my earlier video when you click here and you say manage gateways
sorry, click on the gear icon over here, right and
Manage gateways then it doesn't show your personal gateways, but you can see it is showing me
All enterprise mode gateways, right so that those are being shown here
so earlier
I had to come in here and add beta connections and add beta source, and it was never fun
I had to kind of guess what I needed to add and all that stuff. So so that was not fun
but now what you can do is you can click on this expand button and
Just use the buttons right here. So you can say yep, you know, I want to add this one to data gateway and
That gets added and I'm just gonna click and oh wait. Oh,
Not so fast. I almost did it so folks
The only gripe that I have is that it gives it a default name
Yeah
I would have preferred if it did not give it a name and it it forced me to type a name
Because otherwise I ended up with a lot of data sources called a new data source
Whole new data source one or something like that. So make sure you do change that, right?
So I'm just gonna call it a C Drive on the local excel file and and this kind of puzzled me
I'm not really sure why our windows user name is needed
But I'm gonna punch that in anyway, and then I'm gonna click Add be right back
Alright, so that brought me back to this screen again, and we're getting closer
Now if I click on this we can see that there's a green icon here
But we do have to do one other step which we have to map it to that
But what we're gonna do is we're gonna add this one and then come back and do the mapping
And again, we're gonna go through the same steps. So and again remember to change this
That's a big dots on my friend you don't want a whole bunch of stuff called new data
So it's a sequel server and I'm gonna punch in the credentials and be right back
Alright, we are looking good. So notice here. It's it's looking all green, but we still need to
Map it to here
So these are the data sources which are in the data set and then we can say that which one is it in?
My data gateway, right? So a man matching
my data sources in my model to what is in the data set and
and that's it, and I'm gonna hit apply and
Now I'm gonna click here and click refresh now
oops
What did I do? All right. Well, I'll click
Refresh now right there and we'll check back in in a minute or so. Woohoo
so he came back and our first refresh was something we had done earlier in the day and that was
using the personal gateway and this time we're using
The enterprise gateway and that one has been completed successfully
So that's it for power bi gateway in enterprise mode. And again, make sure to watch our complete series
It's possible that we'll add even more videos in the future. Maybe covering common errors or
Other issues around the power bi gateway
And again if you're just getting started
Or if you keep getting stuck with power bi then make sure to check out my number one-ranked power bi tutorial and get started on
Creating beautiful Barbie on dashboards until next time power on my friend
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