A new version of the Power BI Report Server is released approximately every 4 months. For example, the June 2017 release was followed by an October 2017 version, which included additional features, such as support for imported data in Power BI reports. As of this writing, the next version of Power BI Report Server (following October 2017) will likely be released in the first quarter of 2018. This new version is expected to incorporate the features introduced in the monthly updates to Power BI Desktop in Q4 of 2017, such as the Bookmarks feature described in Chapter 6, Applying Custom Visuals, Animation, and Analytics.

The following diagram describes the support provided for three hypothetical releases of the Power BI Report Server (October of 2017, February of 2018, and June of 2018):

Per the diagram, a new release and version (for example, February 2018) are made available approximately four months following the prior version (from October 2017 to February 2018, from February 2018 to June 2018). The latest version of the Power BI Report Server receives both security and critical updates until a new version is available.

At that point, only security updates will be made available for the remainder of the 12 months. Therefore, assuming a new version is released in June of 2018, organizations with the February 2018 release would receive security updates from June of 2018 through February of 2019. At a minimum, these organizations would want to upgrade their environment prior to February of 2019 to maintain security support.

With each release of the Power BI Report Server, a new version of the Power BI Desktop optimized for this version of the Power BI Report server is also released. This is a distinct application from the Power BI Desktop application, which can be downloaded directly from PowerBI.com and is described more fully in the following section.

To avoid report rendering errors, it's strongly recommended to synchronize the deployment of the Power BI Report Server with its associated version of the Power BI Desktop. For example, once an upgrade to the February 2018 version of the Power BI Report Server is complete, the February 2018 version of Power BI Desktop optimized for the Power BI Report server will be installed on users machines.