On-premises data gateway June 2019 update is now available

We are happy to announce that we have just released the June update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.6.204).

Note: The latest March build number is now 3000.6.204(was previously 3000.6.202). This latest release, includes an updated version of the Mashup Engine, which will match the one released as part of the latest Power BI Desktop June update.

Here are some of the things that we would like to highlight with this month’s release:

• Performance Profile based on gateway CPU
• SAP Common Crypto library support for SAP BW Application Server Kerberos based SSO for Power BI
• Others
  • Port test Issue resolution
  • HTTPS by default
  • Gateway usage and Performance monitoring template update
• June version of the mashup engine

Performance Profile based on gateway CPU

Currently the gateway application utilizes resources on your gateway machine based on preset configurations. Using this feature, the application can now scale to use more resources or less depending on the system CPU.

To allow the gateway to scale based on CPU, this configuration “MashupDisableContainerAutoConfig” would need to be “False”. When this is done, the following configurations are adjusted based on the gateway CPU.

The configurations in this section refer to containers and Working Sets. Most queries use mashup containers to execute. So, the number of mashup containers determine the number of queries which can be executed parallelly. A working set defines the memory allocated to each container. These configurations would be available in the Microsoft.PowerBI.DataMovement.Pipeline.GatewayCore.dll.config file in the “\Program Files\On-premises data gateway” folder

• MashupDefaultPoolContainerMaxCount: Maximum container count used for Power BI Refresh, AAS and others
• MashupDQPoolContainerMaxCount: Maximum container count for Power BI Direct Query
• MashupDQPoolContainerMaxWorkingSetInMB: Maximum working set size for Power BI Direct Query
• MashupTestConnectionPoolContainerMaxInstanceCount: Maximum container count for test connection
• MashupTestConnectionPoolContainerMaxWorkingSetInMB: Maximum working set size for test connection
• MashupAzureConnectorsCachingPoolContainerMaxCount: Maximum container count for LogicApps, PowerApps, Flow
• MashupAzureConnectorsCachingPoolContainerMaxWorkingSetInMB: Maximum working set size for LogicApps, PowerApps, Flow

Note: This feature will automatically be mplemented with the install or update of the June gateway if there have been no prior manual changes to the above configurations. In cases, where these configurations have been updated manually, to use this feature,  you would need to explicitly set this configuration “MashupDisableContainerAutoConfig” to “False”.

SAP Common Crypto library support for SAP BW Application Server Kerberos based SSO in Power BI

Kerberos based SSO for SAP BW Application Server in Power BI currently supports gsskrb5. Unfortunately gsskrb5 is no longer supported by SAP(SAP Note 352295). With the June gateway release, we are introducing support for the SAP common crypto library for Kerberos based SSO for SAP BW Application Server

Others

• Port test Issue resolution: The port test on the On-premises data gateway application used to fail you were using a proxy. This issue has now been fixed.
• HTTPS by default –Starting with the June Gateway release, new installs (not updates) will default to HTTPS instead of TCP based on recommendations by the Azure Service Bus. If the gateway cannot connect using HTTPS, it will fall back to TCP/IP.
• Gateway usage and Performance monitoring template update – In May, we released the Gateway Usage and performance monitoring Hope you got a got a chance to use it. Based on your feedback,in this release, we fixed a couple of issues which caused the csv format of log files to be invalid. The issues are:
  • Numerical columns having commas
  • The error type with a line break

We have also updated the Gateway Performance PBI template file.

Do let us know if you have any additional feedback.

June version of the mashup engine

This month’s Gateway update also includes an updated version of the Mashup Engine, which will match the one released as part of the Power BI Desktop June update This will ensure that the reports that you publish to the Power BI Service and refresh via the Gateway will go through the same query execution logic/runtime as in the latest Power BI Desktop version.

We also made available earlier this year, along with the latest gateway download, the previous 4 monthly gateway updates. This will make rolling back to an older version easier in case of issues/exceptions. This will also aid with troubleshooting.

Please note that some of these upcoming changes may impact you:

1. We would be using .NET 4.7.2 framework for gateways July 2019 version or higher hence some of the operating systems we used to support may no longer be supported. More information about OS which will be supported here.
2. We recently identified a bug in the gateways REST APIs- the encryptedConnection attribute in Gateways – Create Datasource  and the Gateways – Update Datasource APIs is currently ignored. Today, regardless of the provided value, we always try to establish an encrypted connection first but fall back to an unencrypted option in case of a failure. This will be fixed for the following data source types with the July 2019 gateway release causing a value of “Encrypted” to try only an encrypted connection and “NotEncrypted” with an unencrypted connection.

• Impala,
• MySql,
• DB2,
• Netezza,
• PostgreSQL,
• Sybase,
• Teradata

There would be no fallback behavior. This may cause failures for APIs where this attribute value is different than what the data source supports.

 

Please continue to send us feedback for what new capabilities you’d like to see in the future.