torsdag 16 mars 2017

Install Reporting Services on another machine than the SQL Server

We have faced the question of using an SQL hotel for CRM purposes a couple of times. One problem you could be facing is that the SQL server is hosting several different CRM environments so you needed to install the CRM on a named instance, which of course is possible even with a single installation. Since the SQL server might be hosting several CRMs you needed to install the SQL Server Reporting Services on a different machine.

The Reporting Services doesn't need to be installed on the same machine that is hosting the SQL server and this is a feature that you might be interested in when you are hosting several CRM deployments on the same SQL server. It is possible to host different CRM servers on a single SQL server, although on separate instances of the SQL server, and you can also have separate instances of Reporting Services on that SQL.

The issue is that for the CRM installation you have a component called the Reporting Services Connector that you need to install on the server running the Reporting Services of the CRM system. This software can only handle one CRM server and can only be installed once on a server which means that you can only host one CRM server with a Reporting Services installation so even though you can host multiple CRM servers on one SQL server, you still need one Reporting Services installation per CRM server.
You can install the Reporting Services server on one of the servers used for CRM if you need to minimize the number of servers involved, if you do this you need to think about how your reporting is used because if you do a lot of reporting that server might be loaded and might make the system less responsive for the users.

One thing that's good to know is is that you can't run the reporting sevices service with an account that is used for the CRM installation, i.e. the same account as you're running Asynchronous service with. It is a good thing to have separate accounts for every part of the CRM system, but in this case you are not allowed to use the same account because things won't work.

To install the Reporting Services server on a different machine could also be interesting if you're doing a lot of reporting and you find that the SQL server isn't coping with the load, or you'd like to split them because you'd like to have a lot of power on your SQL server for different reasons but you also want that power to be available for database handling rather than reporting.

Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se 

1 kommentar:

  1. That's a very good post, definitely useful. Thank you for sharing it!
    I used to have some issues with doing this, so I contacted dynamics 365 support and they guided me through the process.
    I guess I just have to read blogs like yours a bit more often :)
    Best regards

    SvaraRadera