How to Connect to Impala Using the Power BI Desktop + Cloudera ODBC Impala Driver with Kerberos Authentication

[#1]

• Pre-requisites
• Process
• Step 1: Install the [Impala ODBC Connector 2.7.0 for Cloudera Enterprise]
• Step 2: Copy the ODBC folder to Power BI Desktop folder
• Step 3: Edit the config file
• Step 4: Run Power BI Desktop
• Step 5: Test Connection using ODBC
• Step 6: Fetch data in Power BI Desktop

Pre-requisites

• Power BI Desktop Edition 
• Impala in CDP Private Cloud Base
• Impala ODBC Connector 2.7.0 for Cloudera Enterprise
• CDP Public Cloud Datahub + Kerberos + Power BI Desktop  (in the future)

Process

Step 1: Install the [Impala ODBC Connector 2.7.0 for Cloudera Enterprise] 

Step 2: Copy the ODBC folder to Power BI Desktop folder

Assume your Power BI Desktop is in [ C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\ ], then please copy the ODBC Driver [ C:\Program Files\Cloudera ODBC Driver for Impala ] to [C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\bin\ODBC Drivers\Cloudera ODBC Driver for Impala]

Step 3: Edit the config file

[ C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\bin\ODBC Drivers\Simba Impala ODBC Driver.ini ]

[Simba Impala ODBC Driver]
# Oringinally PowerBI will use its embedded driver, we can change it to Cloudera version
# Driver=Simba Impala ODBC Driver\ImpalaODBC_sb64.dll
Driver=Cloudera ODBC Driver for Impala\lib\ClouderaImpalaODBC64.dll
# If you don't use SSL
SSL=0

Step 4: Run Power BI Desktop

If you want to use Windows AD Kerberos, then please don't install MIT Kerberos, and make sure you are using the Windows AD domain account to log in and run the Power BI Desktop application.

* Reference :

In the [Cloudera-ODBC-Connector-for-Impala-Install-Guide.pdf], it mentioned that, 

==============

• Configuring Kerberos Authentication for Windows
• Active Directory
  
  • The Cloudera ODBC Connector for Apache Impala supports Active Directory Kerberos on
    Windows. There are two prerequisites for using Active Directory Kerberos on Windows:
    
    • MIT Kerberos is not installed on the client Windows machine.
    • The MIT Kerberos Hadoop realm has been configured to trust the Active Directory realm,
      according to Apache's documentation, so that users in the Active Directory realm can
      access services in the MIT Kerberos Hadoop realm.

==============

Step 5: Test Connection using ODBC

Open the [ODBC Data Source (64-bit)] application, and add a new DSN for testing.

I didn't use SSL, so I left the SSL un-checked.

For debug, you can set the log level to DEBUG.

As we will be using Kerberos to connect to Impala, please ensure that the AD server and DNS server are correctly configured.

Step 6: Fetch data in Power BI Desktop

In Power BI Desktop, use the [Get data -> more],

Input [Impala] to search for the connector,

Then, input the server info:

After that, you can use Windows Authentication (as Kerberos), input the 

• DOMAIN\account
• password

Then you can see the window below:

At last, you can see the data after loading:

[#2]

Dear all,

In this post, the Impala driver was installed, but the DSN was created using Hive drivers. Can you confirm whether Impala drivers cannot be used to create an ODBC DSN and if Power BI does not support it as ODBC?

[#3]

Hi, @APentyala 

Thanks for pointing out this.

Impala drivers also works well on this.

Both Impala and Hive drivers can work on this. I will replace the images so that it matches the descriptions 👍🏻