On-premises data gateway November 2019 update is now available

We are happy to announce that we have just released the November update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.14.39)

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Here is a feature that we would like to highlight with this month’s  release:

Change Gateway Recovery Key

The recovery key provided by gateway admins during installation of gateways cannot be changed today This key is used to create the symmetric key which in turn is used for encrypting credentials in data sources/connections using that gateway.

With the November release of Data Gateways, you will now be able to rotate this key.  More information about recovery keys, detailed description on how to perform this change and associated limitations can be found in the data gateway docs.

Here are some of the features that were released with the October release of gateway:

• Load balance based on CPU and Memory throttling
• Performance Monitoring Improvements
• Improved Gateway Documentation

Load balance based on CPU and Memory throttling

Gateway admins can, now, throttle resources of each gateway member to make sure either a gateway member or the entire gateway cluster isn’t overloaded causing system failures.

If a gateway cluster with load balancing enabled receives a request from one of the cloud services (like Power BI), it randomly selects a gateway member. If this member is already at or over the throttling limit set for CPU or memory, another member within the cluster is selected. If all members within the cluster are in the same state, the request would fail.

To enable this feature, gateway admins would update the following settings in the Microsoft.PowerBI.DataMovement.Pipeline.GatewayCore.dll.config file available in the Program Files\On-premises data gateway\ folder.

• CPUUtilizationPercentageThreshold – This configuration allows gateway admins to set a throttling limit for CPU. The permissible range for this configuration is between 0 to 100. A value of 0, which is the default, would indicate that this configuration is disabled.
• MemoryUtilizationPercentageThreshold – This configuration allows gateway admins to set a throttling limit for memory. The permissible range for this configuration is between 0 to 100. A value of 0, which is the default, would indicate that this configuration is disabled.
• ResourceUtilizationAggregateionPeriodInMinutes – This configuration is the time in minutes for which CPU and memory system counters of the gateway machine would be aggregated to be compared against the respective threshold limits set using configurations mentioned above. The default value for this configuration in 5.

Performance Monitoring Improvements

Based on your feedback,  we have now included an additional file called the Query start Report containing the Query start time and also the actual query text. You no longer need to turn on additional logging to obtain the query text. The Query start report contains the following attributes:

Attribute	Description
GatewayObjectId	Unique identifier for the gateway.
RequestId	Unique identifier for a gateway request. It could be the same for multiple queries.
DataSource	Contains both the data source type and data source.
QueryTrackingId	Unique identifier for a query.
QueryExecutionStartTimeUTC	Time when the query execution started.
QueryType	Type of query. For instance, the query passed could be a Power BI refresh or DirectQuery. Or, it could be queries from PowerApps and Microsoft Flow.
QueryText	Complete query.

In addition to the new report file, we have also updated the Performance monitoring template  in this release. The new version includes not only the new Query text and start time but also new visuals to improve the overall troubleshooting  experience.

Improved Gateway Documentation

We have heard your feedback and re-written the gateway documentation. We split them it into content that’s specific to Power BI and general content that applies to all services that the gateway supports. To provide feedback on each article, or the overall gateway docs experience, scroll to the bottom of any article.

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