Reporting Services on Failover Cluster Nodes

Question

Hello everyone,

Let me say that I do understand that SQL Server Reporting Services is not cluster aware, I understand the performance implications of hosting a SQL engine and SSRS on the same machine, I understand that Microsoft does not support clustering SSRS.  I also understand that the best practice would be to place SSRS on a web farm to provide HA.

With that being said, a little background for my situation...  I am in process of planning my upgrades to SQL Server 2012 on my production environments.  After this upgrade, all of them will be using Windows Failover Clustering.  The issue I am facing now is that the server that is currently hosting SQL Server Reporting Services is a standalone server (it also has SQL databases on it, but not very much load).  As for the environment upgrade, I have to plan for what to do with SSRS.  Based on best practices and such, I would be required to purchase at least one additional license, just to handle SSRS.

I recently found a video on YouTube ("How to Configure Reporting Services on Windows Cluster for High Availability - Automatic Failover" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HdUkSEBQMc) where DBATAG went through step by step instructions for getting SSRS setup on 2 cluster nodes, but would only ever run on one node.  He did this by setting up an IP address as a client access point cluster resource.  Then creating a CNAME record with a name pointing to that IP address.  Since the IP address would flip between nodes, and the name directs to the IP address, whichever node had control of the IP address would be utilized for SSRS.

What I am confused about though, is why?  With the video and instructions I mentioned above, it seems as if it would work, but I am curious as to why it is so frowned upon.  In my brain, this isn't much different than placing SSRS on two standalone servers and having a web farm between the two, only that one server would be servicing requests at any one point in time.

Maybe there is a flaw in my understanding, or that I'm not thinking of something, which is entirely possible.  Like I said, I know that it is frowned upon, but I just want to understand why.

Thanks for your time and thank you in advance for your reply!

Jarret

Answer 1

Hi Jarret,

Reporting Services is not cluster-aware. To get load balancing features, we can configure load balancing for the Web servers that host the report servers, and then configure the report servers in a scale-out deployment so that they share the same report server database.
For more information, please see: Configuring Reporting Services for Scale-Out Deployment

Regards,
Fanny Liu

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Fanny Liu
TechNet Community Support

Answer 2

Hi,

Here is topic about Reporting Services cluster, hope this link will help.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic849220-146-1.aspx

Thanks.

Answer 3

Hello Fanny,

Like I said in my post, I understand that SSRS is not cluster aware, and best practice would be to place it on a web farm.  What I was trying to get answered in this post was why the 2 servers, which happen to be in a cluster, could not be used for the 'scale out deployment'.  How is this different than having 2 standalone servers?

With the video I referenced in my last post, it seems like it is possible.  I'm mainly trying to find a flaw in my understanding, or what the drawbacks are with that approach.

For my situation, best practices would force me to purchase additional SQL licenses.

Jarret

Answer 4

I have a similar question. Jarret, you found a solution?

Answer 5

Hello,

No sir, I never got any explanation on why the video I linked in my original post was flawed.  I stated that I understood installing SSRS on a cluster wasn't supported by Microsoft, but I only got replies from users who were hooked on that fact.

Good luck to you sir.  I never had time to do the upgrades, or try the solution from the video, but will need to do something in the future.  If you end up going through with trying this, I would appreciate it if you could comment back and supply some feedback.

Jarret