Create an Azure Analysis Services server

Azure Analysis Services is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) that provides enterprise-grade data modeling capabilities, enabling business intelligence professionals to define business logic and create tabular semantic models.

Prerequisites

Before you can create an Azure Analysis Services server, you need:

An Azure subscription. If you don't have one, create a free account.
Permissions to create resources in your Azure subscription. Typically, this means having the Contributor or Owner role.

Steps to Create an Azure Analysis Services Server

1. Sign in to the Azure portal

Open your web browser and go to the Azure portal. Sign in with your Azure account credentials.

2. Create a new resource

In the Azure portal, on the home page, select Create a resource.
Alternatively, you can click the menu icon (three horizontal lines) in the top-left corner and then select Create a resource.

On the Create a resource page, search for Analysis Services.

Search for Analysis Services in Azure portal

Figure 1: Searching for Analysis Services

3. Configure Analysis Services

Click Create under the Azure Analysis Services offering.

On the Create Analysis Services page, configure the following settings:

Subscription: Select the Azure subscription to use.
Resource group: Select an existing resource group or create a new one. A resource group is a logical container into which Azure resources are deployed and managed.
Server name: Enter a unique name for your server. The server name must be unique across all of Azure.
Location: Select the Azure region where you want to deploy your server. Choose a region geographically close to your users or other Azure services you'll be integrating with.
Pricing tier: Select a pricing tier. The pricing tier determines the performance and capacity of your server. Options range from Dev/Test to Enterprise tiers. For development and testing, you can start with a lower tier.
Always On Availability: This is an optional setting that provides high availability for your server. For production environments, it's recommended to enable this.

Figure 2: Configuring Analysis Services server details

4. Review and Create

After configuring the settings, click Review + create. Azure will validate your configuration.

Once the validation passes, review the summary of your settings and click Create to deploy your Azure Analysis Services server.

5. Deployment

The deployment process typically takes a few minutes. You can monitor the deployment progress in the Azure portal notifications. Once the deployment is complete, you will see a message indicating that your deployment is successful.

Click Go to resource to navigate to your newly created Analysis Services server overview page.

Important: Ensure that you choose a pricing tier that matches your performance and capacity needs. You can scale your server up or down later if required.

Next Steps

After your server is created, you can start modeling your data. Here are some common next steps:

Connect to your Azure Analysis Services server using tools like SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or Visual Studio.
Create a tabular model and import data from various data sources.
Configure firewall rules and access permissions for your server.