On-Premises Data Gateway design for Data Sources running on an Azure VM

Question

Hi,

I'm curious to understand the best practice or potential design change for how an On-Premise Data Gateway can be re-designed should on-premise data sources be migrated from on-premise IaaS servers to Azure VMs.

Is the gateway still required for an Azure VM (IaaS) data sources to be accessed by apps like Power BI - even though all the resources would exist in Azure ?
The SQL Server and the required data in this scenario would be running on an Azure VM (not Azure SQL).

For example, data centre relocation from on-premise to Azure. IaaS servers are migrated into Azure 'As-is' with no server name change (only ip address change).
Leaving no 'on-premise' servers as such. Only servers running in Azure as Azure VMs (with applications, web servers, sql servers all running as Azure VM (IaaS) etc)

I'm aware Azure SQL doesn't require a data gateway but the question is relating to IaaS only not PaaS.

thanks

Paul

Answer 1

Is the gateway still required for an Azure VM (IaaS) data sources to be accessed by apps like Power BI - even though all the resources would exist in Azure ?

Currently, yes. Your Azure VMs run on your Virtual Networks. In the future Power BI may introduce a simpler solution for secure networking to Azure private networks, but currently you still use a Gateway VM.

Answer 2

You could use Azure SQL for one database in serverless mode. To only move the database you need and power bi services will connect directly is you prepare the Data Mart in the VM and then promote just the changes to the database in Azure SQL.

You do this preparation passing the changes from Azure VM SQL database to Azure SQL Database, the changes on the Data Mart. In SQL server VM lives all the ETL preparation. It can even be Azure SQL single database in DTU mode.

Regards and hope this helps.