PowerBI On-Prem data gateway to Synapse with SSO for Import- & DirectQuery

Question

Dear all,

we use Synapse with Private Endpoint to allow only connections from within our corp network.

Our endusers create PowerBI-Reports with data from Syanpse on ther local clients.

The cliens are connected via VPN to the corp network. They can access Synapse.

When the reprot is done they publish it onto a Premium Workspace.

For the refresh schedule to work we use a Power BI on-premise data gatway since Synapse is only accessible from within our corp network.

SSO for Direct Query is working via the gateway.

I would like to achive the same for ImportQuery mode.

If i set everything up as mentioned here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-sso-kerberos

I end up with this error: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-sso-test-configuration#invalid-credentials-error

The On-premise data gatway logs show:

GatewayPipelineErrorCode=DM_GWPipeline_UnknownError
GatewayVersion=
InnerType=SqlException
InnerMessage=
InnerToString=

Answer 1

Post/ask in the Power BI forum:

Welcome to the Power BI forums

Answer 2

import‑sso fails when the gateway can’t mint a TGT for the Synapse FQDN. That “invalid creds” pattern basically means missing SPN on the GW service account.

Answer 3

Hello Marvin Fischenich,

Thank you for reaching out on the Microsoft Q&A forum.

To resolve the error "Windows logins are not supported in this version of SQL Server" when using Power BI with Synapse, you need to ensure that you're using either SQL Authentication (username and password) or Azure Active Directory (AAD) authentication instead of Windows Authentication. Azure Synapse does not support Windows Authentication for connections. To fix this, configure your Power BI Gateway to use SQL Authentication with the appropriate Synapse login credentials or set up Azure AD Authentication for Single Sign-On (SSO) in Power BI to ensure proper access and refresh capabilities.

If you are still facing any issue, please let us know in the comments and where you are encountering this error along with the screenshot for reference. We are glad to help you.

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