On-premises data gateway October 2023 release

Welcome to October! Here is the October 2023 release of the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.190.17).

Here are the highlight’s of this month’s release:

• PowerShell cmdlet to add gateway to cluster
• SAP NCo library upgrade needed for compatibility
• Artifact Ids are available in logs without additional logging

Power BI Desktop Compatibility

This update brings the on-premises data gateway up to date with the October 2023 release of Power BI Desktop.

This version of the gateway 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/run-time as in the October version of Power BI Desktop.

New Announcement 1: New PowerShell cmdlet to add gateway cluster member

We are excited to announce new enhancements we made to the DataGateway PowerShell cmdlets. As a part of these enhancements, we have introduced a new cmdlet to programmatically add a gateway to an existing cluster. You can use this to add gateways to clusters on any machine that you have admin permissions on. It is especially useful when managing gateways in the cloud.

Notes:

1. To use this cmdlet, your gateway version must be `3000.162.9` (Feb 2023) or higher.
2. These cmdlets require Powershell 7 or higher. Please review our online documentation for additional details including installation guidelines.

Adding a new gateway to an existing cluster can be broken down into a few steps:

1. First, to use the command, install the DataGateway module by running Install-Module DataGateway.
2. Second, login to the gateway as a gateway admin by running Login-DataGatewayServiceAccount.
3. Third, add a new gateway to your existing gateway cluster by running Add-DataGatewayClusterMember. The Add-DataGatewayClusterMember will register a new gateway to the local machine and add it as a new member to the gateway cluster you specify. The recovery key and gateway cluster id in the command must pertain to the primary gateway node. In addition, the gateway must already be installed, but not registered to the local machine. The command takes three inputs:
   • GatewayName (string): This is the name of the gateway that will be created on the local machine and added as a member to the cluster. It cannot conflict with any existing gateways on the same tenant.
   • RecoveryKey (Secure string): The recovery key of the primary gateway member in the existing cluster. The recovery key is used by the gateway to encrypt/decrypt on-prem credentials. This is also required to restore the gateway or add a new member to the gateway cluster.
   • GatewayClusterId (Guid): The gateway object id of the primary gateway node.
     • To find this, go to the “Manage connections and gateways” page.
     • Navigate to the on-premises data gateway tab
     • Open your gateway settings by clicking on the information icon. The Guid under the gateway labelled primary is your primary gateway cluster/object id that you want to pass in.

Examples

Here are some examples to help you get started.

Example 1 creates and registers a new gateway called “MyNewGatewayMemeber” to the machine and adds it as a member to the cluster with gateway cluster id “14e63994-6c2c-4fda-a2b1-3fc27079c855”.

Example 1

PS C:\> Add-DataGatewayClusterMember -RecoveryKey (Read-Host "Recovery Key" -AsSecureString) -GatewayName "MyNewGatewayMember" -GatewayClusterId "14e63994-6c2c-4fda-a2b1-3fc27079c855"

Example 2 does the same but shows how you can securely store the encrypted recovery key in a file and pass that into Add-DataGatewayClusterMember without any user interaction.

Example 2

PS C:\> ConvertFrom-SecureString -SecureString (Read-Host "Enter Recovery Key" -AsSecureString) | Out-File -FilePath .\encryptedRecoveryKey.txt
PS C:\> $secureRecoveryKey = (cat .\encryptedRecoveryKey.txt | ConvertTo-SecureString)
PS C:\> Add-DataGatewayClusterMember -RecoveryKey $secureRecoveryKey -Name "MyNewGateway" -GatewayClusterId "14e63994-6c2c-4fda-a2b1-3fc27079c855"

New Announcement 2: SAP NCo library upgrade required

SAP ERP USERS: The SAP ERP connector in Power Apps and Power Automate will require an upgrade of the SAP NCo library from 3.0 to 3.1 to be compatible with the October release of the on-premises data gateway. Connections and flows will fail if the upgrades are not performed at the same time. Please note that PQ SAP connectors still depend on 3.0, but both versions can co-exist in a single machine or environment. In addition, PQ SAP connector support for 3.1 is coming in a few months.

SAP Connector for Microsoft .NET 3.0 (NCo 3.0) allows developers to use BAPIs and remote-enabled function modules in any .NET application (inside-out). You can also access .NET components from any ABAP application by implementing an RFC server in .NET (outside-in).

Artifact Ids in logging

We have added information to the logs that makes it easier to track artifacts such as dataflows and datasets. You no longer need to enable additional logging to have it included. Update to the June 2023 version or later for this improvement.

Thank you!

Please continue to send us feedback for what new capabilities you’d like to see in the future! You can vote for your favorite feature suggestions at Ideas (powerbi.com).