The recommended starting point for the server on which the gateway will be installed is eight CPU cores, 8 GB of memory, and the 64-bit version of Windows 2012 R2 (or later). However, hardware requirements for the gateway server will vary significantly based on the type of dataset supported (import versus DirectQuery/Live connection), the volume of concurrent users, and the queries requested.
For example, if an M Query or part of an M Query is not folded back to the source system, as described in Chapter 2, Connecting to Sources and Transforming Data with M, the gateway server will be required to execute the non-folded M expressions during the scheduled refresh (import) process. Depending on the volume of data and the logic of these expressions, a greater amount of RAM would better support these local operations. Similarly, if many users will be interacting with reports based on a DirectQuery dataset or a Live connection to a SSAS model (on-premises), additional CPU cores will result in better throughput.
Performance counters associated with the gateway and the gateway server can be used to determine whether adjustments in available resources (RAM and CPU) are necessary. Guidance on interpreting these counters and a technique to integrate and visualize this data via Power BI is included in the Monitoring gateway usage section later in this chapter.
In terms of network configuration, the gateway creates an outbound connection to the Azure Service Bus and does not require inbound ports. The gateway communicates on the following outbound ports: TCP 443 (default), 5671, 5672, and 9350 through 9354. It's recommended that organizations whitelist the IP addresses for the data region of their Power BI tenant (for example, North Central US) within their firewall. The list of IP addresses for the Azure data centers can be downloaded via the following URL http://bit.ly/2oeAQyd.
The downloaded list of Azure IP addresses is contained within an XML file which can be easily accessed via Power BI Desktop, as shown in the following image:
The gateway installs on any domain-joined machine and cannot be installed on a domain controller. Additionally, only one gateway can be installed per computer per gateway mode (enterprise versus personal). Therefore, it's possible to have both an enterprise mode and a personal mode gateway running on the same machine.