Migrat­ing prod­ucts to cloud

Data Ware­hous­ing solution’s jump to cloud: the sup­port­ing products

In a pre­vi­ous blog we dis­cussed how to move an exist­ing data ware­house envi­ron­ment to the cloud and start new devel­op­ment next to it.

At Islet, the focus is pri­mar­i­ly on devel­op­ing a new data and ana­lyt­ics envi­ron­ment direct­ly in the cloud using cloud-native tools.

How­ev­er, there are a large num­ber of On-Premis­es envi­ron­ments where the obsta­cle to cloud adop­tion is too sig­nif­i­cant an invest­ment in the cur­rent envi­ron­ment. In this case, it’s a big advan­tage if part of the old solu­tion can be par­tial­ly moved to work in the new cloud envi­ron­ment. Nor­mal dai­ly oper­a­tions can con­tin­ue unin­ter­rupt­ed, and after that, new devel­op­ment can be tar­get­ed at cloud-native technologies.

In addi­tion to data ware­hous­ing and data inte­gra­tions, the over­all solu­tion also includes data mod­el for report­ing and the actu­al reports. Now we will go through new fea­tures that also enable cen­tral­ized inte­gra­tion of these into Microsoft­’s Pow­er BI service.

New migra­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties have been intro­duced into Microsoft­’s Pow­er BI ser­vice, allow­ing migra­tion of data mod­els (AAS) and reports (SSRS). Addi­tion­al­ly, Microsoft­’s Pow­er Plat­form offers alter­na­tives to tra­di­tion­al meth­ods, sim­pli­fy­ing the devel­op­ment and man­age­ment of the data and ana­lyt­ics environment.

Migra­tion tools enabling transfer to cloud

Microsoft is clear­ly com­mit­ted to help­ing their cus­tomers trans­fer to cloud envi­ron­ments and is strong­ly sup­port­ing the cen­tral­iza­tion of data stor­age under one ser­vice (Fab­ric / Pow­er BI).

• Sup­port for migrat­ing Azure Analy­sis Ser­vices mod­els has been added to the Pow­er BI service.
• Also, SQL Serv­er Report­ing Ser­vices reports can now be pub­lished direct­ly to the Pow­er BI service.

In addi­tion to these, data col­lec­tion forms and pro­grams oper­at­ing on-premis­es envi­ron­ments can be replaced with Pow­er Plat­for­m’s Pow­er Apps products.

Migrat­ing Azure Analy­sis Ser­vices mod­els to Pow­er BI Ser­vice as datasets

SQL Serv­er Analy­sis Ser­vices mod­els have long served as the pri­ma­ry sources for report­ing in Microsoft­’s data and ana­lyt­ics (data ware­house) envi­ron­ment. Cloud adop­tion of these mod­els to Azure Analy­sis Ser­vices has been pos­si­ble for some time, but now cen­tral­iz­ing these mod­els into the Pow­er BI ser­vice is possible.

Sev­er­al steps are required for suc­cess­ful migration:

• (Migra­tion to SSAS -> AAS mod­el, if the SQL Serv­er Analy­sis Ser­vices mod­el has not yet been moved to an Azure Analy­sis Ser­vices model)
• Pow­er BI Pre­mi­um work­space: Licens­ing as Pow­er BI Pre­mi­um Per User or pur­chased Pre­mi­um capacity
• Microsoft Azure Data Lake and con­nec­tion configuration
• Enabling Pow­er BI ser­vice’s XMLA endpoints
• Suf­fi­cient Admin-lev­el per­mis­sions in the Pow­er BI service

Migra­tion is done in a straight­for­ward man­ner, and the nec­es­sary actions are guided:

• Choose the AAS resource to be migrated
• Select the Pow­er BI Pre­mi­um workspace
• Choose “Include in migra­tion” for the mod­els to be migrated

With each migra­tion, the mod­el itself is over­writ­ten with the cur­rent migrat­ing ver­sion, so care should be tak­en not to over­write any­thing that should not be over­writ­ten. The migra­tion will indi­cate if there are any fea­tures in the mod­el that the Pow­er BI ser­vice’s Analy­sis Ser­vices mod­el does not yet support.

Once the mod­el migra­tion is suc­cess­ful, the mod­el can be used from the ser­vice. One note to add is that even if usage is already trans­ferred to the Pow­er BI ser­vice, it’s not advis­able to delete the migrat­ing mod­els. Instead, it’s bet­ter to pause them – for at least the test­ing period.

After­ward, you’ll still need to switch the data sources to the new migrat­ed mod­els and test the reports’ functionality.

Migrat­ing SSRS reports to Pow­er BI Service

Pre­vi­ous­ly devel­oped reports may con­tain tens or even hun­dreds of hours of work, mak­ing it sen­si­ble and pos­si­ble to uti­lize these reports even when moved to the cloud, pro­vid­ed that the source is trans­ferred for report accessibility.

A big deal is that, going for­ward, the migra­tion and usage of pag­i­nat­ed reports (SSRS) no longer require a Pow­er BI Pre­mi­um work­space, so with­out Pre­mi­um capac­i­ty or larg­er licens­es, these can be moved to the Pow­er BI service.

Before migra­tion, it’s advis­able to read about the restric­tions relat­ed to migrat­ing pag­i­nat­ed reports. The migra­tion tool will noti­fy you if there are prob­lems dur­ing the migra­tion, and these usu­al­ly relate on some lev­el to com­pat­i­bil­i­ty issues, mean­ing that the Pow­er BI por­tal may not sup­port all features.

Oth­er­wise, the migra­tion process is quite sim­ple: Start­ing from SQL Serv­er Report­ing Ser­vice 2017, an option has been added to the migra­tion tool that allows reports to be pub­lished direct­ly to the Pow­er BI ser­vice. Using this option, reports can be pub­lished to your own work­space in the Pow­er BI service.

Replac­ing Excels with Pow­er Apps

At Islet, we aim to enhance our clients’ use of data and ana­lyt­ics envi­ron­ments through Microsoft­’s Pow­er Plat­form. Pow­er Plat­form tools offer a lot of pos­si­bil­i­ties — the biggest part being the wide­ly known Pow­er BI with its exten­sive and well-known mod­el­ling and report­ing capa­bil­i­ties. In addi­tion to this, Microsoft­’s Pow­er Plat­form has proven itself as an effec­tive pack­age, enabling the devel­op­ment of small to large appli­ca­tions as well as the cre­ation of integrations.

Per­son­al­ly, the most exit­ing use case has been enabling data input and man­age­ment for end-users with­in data and ana­lyt­ics envi­ron­ments. Pow­er Apps offers exten­sive inte­gra­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties and can be con­nect­ed to mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent sources as the base for the appli­ca­tion. This makes it even more appeal­ing for this pur­pose because it allows users to see infor­ma­tion from a data ware­house, based on which they can save entries to anoth­er data source.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Excels have served as the spear­head for this kind of data man­age­ment. How­ev­er, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, Excels are prone to break down if made avail­able to a large user base — not to men­tion issues relat­ed to val­i­da­tions, data refresh­ing with­in the Excel, and using Excels as a data source. Regard­less of the use case among those pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, a cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure is inevitable at some point, requir­ing sev­er­al hours or days to resolve.

What’s next?

We hope this blog series on the pos­si­bil­i­ties of mov­ing to the cloud has sparked some thoughts. If you’ve ever con­sid­ered migrat­ing your data and ana­lyt­ics envi­ron­ment to the cloud or devel­op­ing a new data and ana­lyt­ics envi­ron­ment, please feel free to con­tact us!

Up next, we will be dis­cussing things relat­ed to Fab­ric, Pow­er BI, and Pow­er Apps — so stay tuned!

Best regards,

Mikko and Ilkka

PS. In case you’re inter­est­ed, read more about our data and ana­lyt­ics ser­vices here.