The Power BI Report Server is a modern enterprise-reporting platform that allows organizations to deploy, manage, and view Power BI reports, in addition to other report types, internally. The Power BI Report Server allows large numbers of users to view and interact with the same reports created in Power BI Desktop in a modern web portal and via the same Power BI mobile applications used with the Power BI cloud service. The Power BI Report Server addresses a current and sometimes long-term need to maintain a fully on-premises BI solution that includes both data sources and reports. Additionally, the Power BI Report Server can be used in combination with the Power BI service to support scenarios in which only certain reports need to remain on premises.
The Power BI Report Server has been built on top of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), and therefore organizations can continue to utilize existing paginated SSRS reports and familiar management skills to easily migrate to the Power BI Report Server. In addition to Power BI and paginated reports, the Office Online Server (OOS) can be configured to allow for viewing and be interacting with Excel reports in the same report server portal, thus providing a consolidated hub of BI reporting and analysis. Moreover, when provisioned with Power BI Premium capacity, organizations can later choose to migrate on-premises Power BI reports to dedicated capacity in the Power BI service, without incurring an additional cost.
This chapter reviews the primary considerations in planning and deploying the Power BI Report Server. This includes feature compatibility with the Power BI service, licensing and configuration details, and an example deployment topology. Additionally, management and administration topics are reviewed, including the scheduled data refresh of Power BI reports and monitoring server usage via execution log data.
In this chapter, we will review the following topics:
- Planning for the Power BI Report Server
- Installation and configuration of Power BI Report Server
- Power BI Desktop for Power BI Report Server
- Power BI Report Server Portal
- Scheduled data refresh and Live connections
- Power BI mobile applications
- Power BI Report Server administration
- Scaling Power BI Report Server