April 23, 2012 at 5:30 am
Hi, I'm fairly new to RS and have been asked to build a Disaster Recovery solution for our main RS server (2008 R2). The sceanrio is that we are basically having to build a new RS server off-site from a set of backups. So I would start with re-installing SQL RS fresh.
From that I know about the DB restore and encryption key side of things, and that I only need to restore the config files if I've applied a lot of non default config changes (which I haven't).
I also appreciate that the reports are stored in the DB and to get to the .rdl files I only need to 'download' to disk if I want to develop them further. However, in this scenario how do I re-produce the .rptproj and .sln files that exist in the same folder as the .rdl files. Do these need to be recovered from the OS backup or is there a way in Report Manager that I can extract these like the .rdl file??
Thank-you
April 23, 2012 at 10:05 am
I don't think you can, as those files are the Visual Studio project files, they have no equivalent in Reporting Services.
I'd be looking at recovering from OS or File System backups. You can backup your .rdl files at the same time then too.
Cheers
April 23, 2012 at 12:16 pm
It sounds to me as though you are talking about 2 different things: Restoring your reporting services instance, and restoring your project files.
The reporting services instance is the database, the config files, and your key.
Your project files (sln, rdl etc.) can be maintained by a file system backup, and are really separate from live reporting.
April 24, 2012 at 3:56 am
Thanks for your replies both.
Yes I had read that everything was contained within the DB so that when you restore the DB & Keys you should be able to use all reports. However from what you are saying this clearly isn't the case as anything in a project or solution isn't included and needs to be recovered frmo a file System backup. This would also include Data Sources right? In which case the DB restore and go theory is not quite as easy. Perhaps you could just confirm my assumptions.
Many Thanks
April 25, 2012 at 1:17 am
Only the rdl files and data sources are deployed to the report server so your sln and project files are never there to recover. Your normal fileshare backups will take care of those.
The report manager web pages will show you just what is on the report server.
Always back up your report server databases and, using the report server configuration tool, create and backup the encryption key and store the password safely.
To recover your reports, data sources, subscriptions and everything else on the report server, the fastest way is to restore your report server database onto the new server and use the report server configuration tool to input the encryption key and point the report server at the restored database.
It's a great way of moving your reports from one server to another if they are identical SQL versions and there are no other reports on the new server. Otherwise you can use the RSScripter free tool to download everything from one server and deploy on another - that also works well.
April 25, 2012 at 2:10 am
Thanks for that useful input P!
Rgds, Simon
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