Is it possible to use SSRS ReportServer DB & ReportServerTempDB for Power BI Report Server?

[cyclist007]

Hi,

One of our clients have report server Databases for an SSRS instance (ReportServer DB & ReportServerTempDB). On installing a separate/new Power BI Report Server (PBIRS), they are wondering if the same SSRS databases can be used (pointed to) for the PBIRS? I would think no (as PBIRS is supposedly a superset to SSRS), but is there any documentation around this? Can anyone provide any details?

Thanks

[d_gosbell]

No you definitely should not do this. I can't think of any specific documentation that points this out, but each instance of SSRS or PBIRS should definitely have it's own set of databases. You can migrate an old SSRS database to PBIRS, but you should not point both instances at the same database.

One reason is that PBIRS gets updated every 4 months and you should always try to keep reasonably upto date as Microsoft only support the current version and the 2 prior versions. These updates often include small changes to the database schema so at somepoint it's highly likely that PBIRS would break SSRS.

Another reason is that the servers are constantly reading and writing to the databases and expect to have exclusive write access. With two instances connected you could cause lock/blocking that could cause strange behaviours on both instances.

[cyclist007]

Thanks @d_gosbell 

I wish Microsoft uses at least different default names for the Power BI metadata database names or this just causes confusion with SSRS (i will be editing the names). Also this should also be documented better, as SSRS & PBIRS documentation otherwise is pretty overlapping.