POWER BI ON-PREMISES DATA GATEWAY

Securely shuttling data to cloud tools & systems from on-premises sources, or traversing private networks. This checklist does not cover Personal Gateways, which generally are viewed as a Governance risk.

Goblin tip:

There are three different types of data gateways:

  • On-premises data gateway (standard mode): The standard mode gateway is the most common type that you use for most scenarios. You should install a standard mode gateway on an always-on virtual machine (VM) that's dedicated for that gateway. You combine multiple standard mode gateways in high-availability clusters, to ensure that if one goes offline or is being updated, you can still use a gateway.
  • On-premises data gateway (personal mode): The personal mode gateway is installed and managed on a user machine. It's notoriously difficult to govern and manage. You should only use a personal gateway in very limited scenarios, opting instead for a standard mode gateway.
  • VNet data gateway: A VNet data gateway is a managed Microsoft service available for Fabric capacities. You use a VNet gateway for data sources on a private network or behind a firewall, like those that are on an Azure VNet. Private network data sources are becoming much more common, so you should know what a VNet and a VNet gateway are, and when/why you'd use them.

The current version of this checklist focuses upon On-premises data gateways.

DATA GOBLINS POWER BI DATA GATEWAY CHECKLIST

Version X.X - Update-in-progress: March 2024


If you are setting up a Data Gateway for the first time, or auditing an existing one, the below checklist helps you figure out what to consider:

Click the question mark (?) for a link to a reference document. This will be learn.microsoft.com documentation; if none are available, this may be a Data Goblins article, or another blog post reference.

Installation

Data Gateway basic installation & configuration; this is always done.



Basic Setup

Initial configuration & optimization steps to consider after installing the Data Gateway.



Governance & Security

Considerations for governing & securing the data gateway in your organization.




DATA GATEWAY DOCUMENTATION CHECKLIST

Documentation for Data Gateways should mostly be focused on the process & way-of-working; it should be connected to the team's overall DataOps methodology. A Data Gateway brings no value if the team, for example, deploys directly to Production for "hot fixes".

Data Gateway Documentation


FOOTNOTES

[1] There are 3 types of on-premises data gateways:
1. Enterprise Gateway: For on premises data sources
2. Virtual Network Gateway: For traversing private networks
3. Personal Gateway: For small-scale, personal BI usage scenarios.
 See the linked article in the checklist for more info.

[2] Spool storage will transiently store data on the Gateway machine. With an SSD this goes faster than a classical HDD. Check the linked article for more details.

[3] In smaller-scale situations, you might not need a cluster; however, avoiding the single point of failure plus load balancing is a huge advantage. It is generally worth it to set up a Gateway cluster.

[4] This is to ensure that queries from Development & Test workspaces do not interrupt Production workloads causing latency issues for business user queries.

[5] Load balancing ensures that if one Gateway is experiencing a high load, another will be used. You can adjust the thresholds for which this happens, yourself.

[6] Rarely, Gateway updates can cause issues with existing queries. It is thus a good practice to first update on your Development and Test Gateways to avoid situations where an update causes an outage in Production workloads.

BACK TO TOP