I recently performed an installation of Reporting Services 2008 R2 in SharePoint Integrated mode on two servers. The SSRS integrated mode R2 version is supposed to have much improved performance over the previous version. I’m still in progress of benchmarking tests, so can’t comment yet, but there were some installation steps that I had to perform above and beyond the documented steps that I thought I’d post here as a reminder to myself – and anyone else that has a need. These steps were tested against the November CTP of R2 and might change when the Release Candidate comes out soon. I’ll post more complete instructions at that time and point out what changes, if anything.

You can find the official installation instructions on the page for downloading the SharePoint Add-in here: SQL Server® 2008 R2 November CTP Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint® Technologies 2010. I’ll use those instructions here as a starting point using a blue font, and interject with the additional steps that I performed in black font.
Let’s get started. In my environment, I have one SharePoint server which I’ll call SP01, and one SQL/SSRS server which I’ll call RS01. Both are running Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit. Note – I did NOT install the Windows hotfix required to run PowerPivot for SharePoint (see if you need to know more about the hotfix) since this server environment was set up just for testing SSRS.

You can install and configure the servers in any order, but integrated operations will not be available until the configuration steps are complete for both servers. For detailed information on the installation steps, see the Readme for the existing Reporting Services Add-in.

    Step 1: Install a SharePoint technology instance.
On SP01, I installed SharePoint Beta 2 using the Server Farm/Complete option during installation since I wanted to host the SharePoint databases on server RS01. I ran the configuration wizard and selected the option “Create a new server farm”. I then provided info to use RS01 as the database server and typed a database name and credentials, then a farm admin passphrase. I set the Central Admin authentication to NTLM. In Central Admin, I used the option to set up everything myself and only set up the service account. I did not set up any services, since I was only interested in the SSRS integration. I did create an initial site collection – I’ll call it B – using a blank team site.

On RS01, I used the same installation media and used the Server Farm/Complete option.  I ran the configuration wizard and selected the option “Connect to an existing server farm”.  Then specify configuration database settings – point to RS01 and the database created when configuring SharePoint on SP01, provide the passphrase, and finish up by walking through the wizard using defaults. RS01 is joined to the SP01 farm.
    Step 2: Install SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP Reporting Services and specify that the report server use SharePoint Integrated mode.
I installed the database engine and SSRS with the SharePoint Integrated mode option.
    Step 3: Configure Reporting Services.
Here I made sure I had a valid service account, and set up the database to run on RS01. I validated that all was well by going to the report server URL, like this: rs01/reportserver. Even though you haven’t finished the configuration, you should be able to confirm that the server is running. (I can’t recall the exact message here- I’ll post it later when I run through the RC installation.)
    Step 4: Download the Reporting Services Add-in by clicking the rsSharePoint.msi link later on this page. To start the installation immediately, click Run. To install at a later time, click Save.
    Step 5: Install the Reporting Services Add-in and configure the report server on the SharePoint technology instance.

I ran into trouble at this step when the add-in refused to install and rolled back without explanation.
Here’s what I did to resolve – it just worked so no clue (nothing in event log) as to why it failed with normal installation:
  1. Open a command prompt.
  2. Change to the directory where the .msi file resides.
  3. Type msiexec /i SharePointRS.msi SKIPCA=1
  4. The installer opens. Just follow the normal flow, and it should finish successfully.
  5. Type cd %temp%
  6. Type rscustomaction /i

IMPORTANT – even if you have Admin rights on the server, you MUST open the command text prompt using Run As Administrator.

You know it worked when you can open General Application Settings page in Central Admin and see the Reporting Services section.

Step 6: Set permissions and add Reporting Services content types.

In Central Admin, go to General Application Settings page and click the Reporting Services Integration link.
Type in the Report Server Web Service URL (as it appears in the Report Server Configuration Manager). Because I”m not using Kerberos in this environment, I set the authentication mode as Trusted Account. I put in the credentials for the admin on RS01, and clicked OK.

Here I ran into another problem. In the log file, I found the following message:

The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized

I knew this was some sort of authentication issue but it wasn’t immediately obvious where or how. From SP01, I could not connect to the server (http://RS01/reportserver) – I got the NT challenge prompt 3 times. Here’s what I did to fix:

I removed RSWindowsNegotiate from the RsReportServer.config file and then did stop/start on the SSRS service using the Reporting Services Configuration Manager. That left RSWindowsNTLM in the config file, and forced NTLM authentication for the report server and all was fine after that in terms of authentication.

Although I specified “activate feature in all existing site collections”, it didn’t happen. I had to manually activate the feature in my blank site but that worked fine. Then I successfully deployed reports and was able to view the reports. I’ll be analyzing performance in the coming weeks and will post my conclusions.