Introduction
Power BI is a business intelligence platform that helps to represent data in graphical view as well as share and analyze data. Many companies are not allowed to go to cloud services and are bound to an on-premises environment because of several reasons such as data privacy, security, compliance or data-sovereignty and data sensitivity. As Power BI is a robust platform for data analysis and visualization, it is most demanding and one of the best platforms for report designing and sharing. For those who cannot go to Power BI Cloud services Microsoft has brought Power BI on-prem services which is known as Power BI Report Server. Power BI Report server is like SQL Server Reporting Server.
Additionally, installation and setup steps are almost the same.
In this article, we will learn what Power BI Report Server is, it's features and how to install it. This article will describe steps to install Microsoft Power BI Report Server - January 2021 release. Before starting the installation steps, let us learn about the Power BI Report Server.
Prerequisites for Power BI Report Server
- SQL Server Enterprise Edition with Software Assurance
- Power BI Premium
For development and test purposes we can use SQL Server 2019 Community version too.
What is Power BI Report Server?
Power BI Report Server is available as part of Power BI Premium which enables on-premises web and mobile viewing of Power BI reports as well as enterprise capabilities of SQL Server Reporting Services. Alternatively, it is included with SQL Server Enterprise Licensing with Software Assurance. It is an on-premises report server with a web portal where we can display and manage reports and KPIs. Furthermore, it comes with tools to create Power BI reports, paginated reports, KPIs and mobile reports. It is like SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and Power BI Service online. Using Power BI Premium license, we can create a hybrid deployment mixing cloud and on-premises.
We can do the following things using Power BI Desktop and Power BI Server,
- We can build reports using Power BI desktop.
- Can publish interactive reports to Power BI Server on-Prem
- View and analyze reports in web browser. Additionally, can use it through Power BI App in your mobile or tablet or as an email in the in-box.
Power BI Web Portal features
- Web portal is secure and supported in all modern web browser.
- Content in web browser is managed in traditional folder hierarch.
- Can grouped contents in folder by: Power BI reports, mobile reports, paginated reports, KPIs and Excel workbooks.
- Custom branding of web portal according to your organization is available.
- Can schedule report processing, access report on-demand
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