This project will create a new Windows Virtual Machine in Azure running the Power BI Gateway using Terraform. The Power BI Gateway is useful if your data is within a VNET and you want to expose it to Power BI.

The deployment is done using Terraform and a CustomScriptExtension with the included PowerShell scripts. The scripts are deployed into Azure Storage as part of the overall deployment, where they are pulled down onto the newly provisioned virtual machine by the CustomScriptExtension and executed locally. The scripts will install PowerShell 7 (a pre-requisite of the Power BI Gateway PS Cmdlets), then install and configure the data gateway. Logging of the Power BI Gateway deployment is done locally to log files and also surfaced back into Azure via the CustomScriptExtension.

It is recommended that you use a development M365 tenant as a sandbox for this deployment. You can get a free Microsoft 365 E5 developer subscription from here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/dev-program#Subscription. You will need to associate this M365 tenant to either a new or existing Azure subscription, as this is needed to host the Azure VM that will be running the Power BI Gateway. To change the directory of an existing Azure subscription, within the Azure portal, select 'change directory' then select your M365 tenant:

You will also need an AAD Application registered with a secret to create the Power BI Gateway cluster:

This application will need the PBI Service permissions enabled:

Make a note of the AAD Application Id, secret and your Tenant Id.

Within VSCode, open the project within the devContainer. Add your AAD Application Id, Secret and Tenant to the variables.tf file. You will want to ensure you add additional administrator(s) to the Power BI Gateway Data Cluster so that you can manage it once it is created. The gateway_admin_ids variable is a comma separated list of AAD User Ids and the gateway_region parameter lets you override the Power BI Data Gateway region to use for your tenant.

az login

terraform init

terraform apply -auto-approve -var admin_password={YOUR-PASSWORD} -var gateway_name={YOUR-GATEWAY-NAME} -var gateway_recovery_key={YOUR-GATEWAY-RECOVERY-KEY} -var gateway_admin_ids={AAD-USER-OBJECT-ID-GUID} -var gateway_region={AZURE-DATA-CENTER}

Once the deployment is complete, login to the Power BI portal and check it exists under https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/gateways:

To troubleshoot any Power BI Gateway deployment or configuration errors, check the Azure VM Extensions status in the Azure portal:

An example of the output within the Azure VM Extension 'Detailed status' is available here: CustomScriptExtension output

If this doesn't help, then remote desktop (RDP) onto the VM and check the logs in the following locations:

• C:\WindowsAzure\Logs\Plugins\Microsoft.Compute.CustomScriptExtension\1.10.9\CustomScriptHandler.log
• C:\WindowsAzure\Logs\Plugins\Microsoft.Compute.CustomScriptExtension\setup.log
• C:\WindowsAzure\Logs\Plugins\Microsoft.Compute.CustomScriptExtension\pbiGateway.log

An example of both the setup.log and pbigateway.log have also been included.

You can also check that the PowerShell script files have been successfully downloaded onto the VM in the following location:

• C:\Packages\Plugins\Microsoft.Compute.CustomScriptExtension\1.10.9\Downloads\0\
• C:\Packages\Plugins\Microsoft.Compute.CustomScriptExtension\1.10.9\Status\0.status

Lastly, look in Event Viewer under 'Applications and Services Logs' - 'On-premises data gateway service':