SQL Server Reporting Services on Windows Server 2008 R2

In the tradition of the entertainment awards season, we want to thank Microsoft for taking IIS out of the equation with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. That made installation and configuration of Reporting Services much simpler. For those who began working with Reporting Services 2008, this is the first version with a dedicated web server. The main advantage is simplified configuration without worries about the impact on IIS and the web applications that depend upon it.

SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services, however, does depend upon IIS to manage and share reports. This works very well with Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.x. If you need to install the 2005 version of Reporting Services on Windows Server 2008 R2 you will need to pay special attention to the IIS installation. This version of Reporting Services is not fully compatible with IIS 7.5, which is provided with the operating system.

We recently needed to get Reporting Service 2005 installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 and quickly ran into my first issue. No matter how hard we tried, we could not get the Reporting Services to show up as a selection during setup. After doing some research, we found that the IIS 6 components of IIS 7.5 are required for Reporting Services. Most of the blogs and articles simply indicated that adding IIS 6.0 Management Compatibility would fix that. However, the problem still existed.

The most common services and features are automatically included when you install the IIS 7.5 role on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. It turns out there are a few more features that Reporting Services 2005 requires. The first one we have already mentioned: IIS 6.0 Management Compatibility. When you select this feature, make sure that all of the sub-features are selected.

Moving up to the Common HTTP Features section, you will notice that not all of the sub-features are selected. The HTTP Redirection and WebDAV Publishing are not selected for installation. HTTP Redirection is required so make sure to install it. The WebDAV Publishing feature is not required by Reporting Services 2005.

In the Application Development section, select the ASP.NET option.

The Windows Authentication option is a required security feature. Check Windows Authentication under the Security section.

If a dialog appears to tell you that other features are required as you make these selections, click OK to install those features.

After installing the new role features is complete, go to the Services control panel and confirm that the World Wide Web Publishing Service is set to start automatically, and is running.

Now you can run the SQL Server 2005 setup and install Reporting Services. When installing Reporting Services, go ahead and select the configuration option for standalone or SharePoint integration. Setup will walk you through the configuration process and you are now ready to go.