Updating Power BI Report Server directly in production can be risky and painful to roll back. This post introduces a safer workflow using a dedicated test server and an automated sync script that mirrors your reports and data sources before any upgrade. Learn how this setup prevents downtime, simplifies testing, and makes Report Server updates predictable instead of stressful.
Power BI Report Server (PBIRS) is an important product — especially for organizations that need analytics on‑premises. From SQL Server 2025 onward, PBIRS is officially supported on SQL Server Standard Edition, making it accessible to a much wider range of deployments. It’s stable, reliable, and follows in the footsteps of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). But it also comes with… quirks. If you want to jump straight to the feature comparison, click here:👉 Skip to the Feature Comparison If you’re…
Every now and then I run into one of those long‑standing defaults in Power BI Report Server that feel like they’ve survived unchanged since the early SSRS days.A perfect example: email subscriptions for paginated reports still default to MHTML. Not exactly the format anyone is excited to receive in 2026. And yes — everything described in this post applies only to paginated reports, the report type formerly known from SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Power BI reports (.pbix) are not…
SQL Server 2025 hit GA on November 18, 2025, and it brings real on‑prem momentum—especially for teams invested in Power BI Report Server (PBIRS). SQL Server Standard edition now scales more comfortably, supporting up to 32 cores and 256 GB RAM (previously 128 GB), which gives mid‑size workloads room to breathe without jumping to Enterprise. That said, SSAS Tabular in Standard remains capped at 16 GB, so if Tabular models are central to your stack, that limit is still the…
So, you’ve got Power BI Report Server running smoothly inside your domain with Kerberos authentication working like a charm. Now you want to make it accessible from the outside world—securely—and integrate it with Okta for modern authentication. Sounds like a plan! Let’s walk through how to make that happen using Okta Access Gateway (OAG). Prerequisites Before diving into the configuration, make sure you’ve got the following in place: With that out of the way, let’s get to the fun part….
If you’ve ever tried to expose your Power BI Report Server to the internet, you’ve probably run into a few headaches—especially when it comes to authentication. Let’s walk through the typical setup, the challenges, and how modern identity platforms like Okta can help bridge the gap between legacy and modern authentication. The Reverse Proxy Setup When you want to make internal services like Power BI Report Server accessible from the internet, the go-to approach is a reverse proxy. Think of…
Deploying Power BI Report Server in a SQL Server Availability Group (AG) is a great way to boost resilience and uptime. But there’s a catch: Power BI Report Server itself isn’t AG-aware. That means when a failover happens, things can get messy—especially with SQL Agent jobs. The Problem with Failover When the AG fails over to a secondary node: The Fix: Add a Primary Check Step to Agent Jobs To avoid this, you can add a check step to each…
Running into a “Service Unavailable” error when accessing your Power BI Report Server? You’re not alone. This issue can be frustrating, especially when everything else seems to be configured correctly. One common cause is incomplete URL reservations in http.sys. This is especially relevant if your Report Server is set up to respond to multiple addresses, like in a scale-out deployment or an Availability Group setup (see my previous post: Power BI Report Server: Managing Multi-Homed URLs in an Availability Group…
Running Power BI Report Server in a high-availability setup can be a bit tricky—especially when you want it to respond to multiple URLs. A common scenario is when the Report Server is installed on nodes that are part of a SQL Server Availability Group (AG). Why Multiple URLs Matter In this setup, each server should be reachable via its own hostname, but the primary node of the AG should also be accessible via the AG listener name. This ensures that…
Managing permissions in Power BI Report Server can feel like navigating a maze. Just like in Windows, you can assign permissions to folders or individual items, and you can even break inheritance at any level to redefine access. While this flexibility is great, it can quickly become hard to manage—especially in larger environments. Keep It Simple: Best Practices for Permission Management Here’s my recommendation: If you’re new to this topic, check out Microsoft’s documentation:Roles and permissions in Reporting Services –…