Infrastructure Upgrade and Access Change for Added Data Security

September 29, 2021

The Business Intelligence (BI) team in UW-IT Enterprise Reporting and Analytics (ERA) is completing an infrastructure upgrade.

If you use reports available through BI Portal or if you partner with our team to support data tools on the BI Portal, you need to know about some of the changes we’ve made and how they may impact your work.

1. Increased Security for Reports

Starting on October 6, to increase security, access to the ERA report server and all reports available through the BI Portal (https://biportal.uw.edu) will require you to be physically on campus or connect to UW’s network via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for access off-campus. This is a departure from the current security in which reports are accessible from outside the UW networks without installing a VPN client.

Our goal is to provide best security practices around UW’s data to ensure that our systems and the data are not compromised.

How does this impact you?

If you are on campus you don’t have to do anything.  If you are NOT on campus, you must connect to the UW network through a VPN. You will be required to download and install the Husky OnNet VPN application supported by UW-IT. You can read about it, download it, and learn more on IT Connect: Husky OnNet.

The security of the systems and data that you access are our priority and a VPN is critical to help protect personal and University data and information on the UW network.

2. Latest SQL Server and SSAS (aka cubes) Versions

With this tech refresh, we’ve made the following upgrades:

  • Migrated to Windows Managed Virtual Machines (VMs) for all of our BI infrastructure.
    • Environment DEV TEST PROD
      Old Servers edwdevbi1.s.uw.edu edwtestbi1.s.uw.edu reports: edw.washington.edu
      cubes:   cubes.uw.edu
      New Servers edwdevbi11.s.uw.edu edwtestbi10.s.uw.edu reports: edw.washington.edu
      cubes:   cubes.uw.edu
  • Upgraded to the latest software versions:
    • SQL Server 2019
    • SSRS Version 15.0
    • SSAS 2019

Questions?

Whether you’re a BI Portal user or a partner development team, if you have any questions about this tech refresh, please write help@uw.edu with “BI Infrastructure Upgrade/Access” in the subject line.