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ManxShred's avatar
ManxShred
Frequent Visitor
8 years ago
Solved

Scale out deployment on March 2018 PBIRS

I am having major problems trying to get a scale out configuration of Power BI SSRS March update.   I have installed SSRS on 2 servers pointing to a single database, and added the 2nd server to the...
nlb
scale-out
  • ManxShred's avatar
    ManxShred
    8 years ago

    We eventually found the cause of this issue with the help of the MS support team.

     

    We also needed to set the <ReportServerUrl> value in the RSReportServer.config file, which is found in the <UI> node.

    This must be configured to be the same value as in the "Web Service URL" in the RS Configuration Manger.

     

    So if you have 2 servers, SSRS1 and SSRS2, with a NLB named Reporting, you would set the <ReportServerUrl> to http://SSRS1/ReportServer or http://SSRS2/ReportServer on SSRS1 and SSRS2 respectively.

     

    The issue was caused by the way SSRS works, where it can call itself.  Since we configured the NLB, it was calling "Reporting", which would go out via the network to the NLB then back to the server.  After a period of time, this look would time out or switch to the other server in the NLB and cause SSRS to stop working.  Setting this value routes these internal calls to the local server.

ManxShred's avatar
ManxShred
Frequent Visitor
8 years ago

We eventually found the cause of this issue with the help of the MS support team.

 

We also needed to set the <ReportServerUrl> value in the RSReportServer.config file, which is found in the <UI> node.

This must be configured to be the same value as in the "Web Service URL" in the RS Configuration Manger.

 

So if you have 2 servers, SSRS1 and SSRS2, with a NLB named Reporting, you would set the <ReportServerUrl> to http://SSRS1/ReportServer or http://SSRS2/ReportServer on SSRS1 and SSRS2 respectively.

 

The issue was caused by the way SSRS works, where it can call itself.  Since we configured the NLB, it was calling "Reporting", which would go out via the network to the NLB then back to the server.  After a period of time, this look would time out or switch to the other server in the NLB and cause SSRS to stop working.  Setting this value routes these internal calls to the local server.

pbx's avatar
pbx
Icon for Helper V rankHelper V
8 years ago

Your configuration is going to break if the following conditions are true (which may happen more frequently than we may think):

 

  1. You want to use an SSL-only configuration
  2. Your SSRS1, SSRS2 server names are not internet routable
  3. You need to use a third party CA, which doesn't like having non-internet routable names in SAN

For the above reasons we have added entries into the hosts files of each server so that the report server URL points to the IP of the server, so once connections are initated within the server, they do not go to the other node.

  • cbailiss's avatar
    cbailiss
    Icon for Advocate II rankAdvocate II
    8 years ago

    Thanks, had the same problem and this solution worked for us too.

     

    Microsoft, please take note, this information must  be included in the documentation as setting up scale-out configuration at the moment involves a frustrating troubleshooting process!