High availability for SSRS on SQL Cluster 2012?

[Kockalone]

Hi,

We are trying to determine how to provide SSRS for high availability since is not cluster aware. We have active/passive SQL Server 2012 cluster with Enterprise Edition where the other node is truly passive so only one active node is licensed. MS recommends scale-out deployment and if I understand well I will need additional servers with SQL Server (standard edition minimum on each) with SSRS installed and use shared database on cluster and use NLB - this is not an option for us.
Is it possible to use only existing SQL cluster nodes and create HA Scale-Out Deployment of SSRS? Are there any possible reason not to go with this? Do we need to license the passive node? I don't need NLB in this case, right?
I found this solution

http://www.tfsconsulting.com.au/how...ting-service-scale-out-deployment-clustering/

but I am not sure where it will my report request go (on which SSRS) and do I need passive node licensed in the any case as SSRS will run on both nodes (only one SSRS server is handling requests)?

Just as clarification - we need high availability using current sql cluster and not load balancing capability.

Thanks.

 

[niall5098]

HI There,

is the storage shared on independent?

I have encountered this type of issue in the past and what i have done is the following:

configure reports on node1 but use the server cluster name as the connection server, then browse to the reports database etc.
take a backup of the encryption key for use later.
verify the url works with the cluster server name (

http://clustername/reports

If this is up and running then backup the reports databases and failover to node2. if its shared storage then the databases should all be on node2 aswell but you will need to reconfigure the reports within the SSRS confif manager on node2. use the same steps as node1, point to the cluster and also restore the encrytped key. this should add the second node to the scale out deployment. you see this in the bottom tab od the SSRS config manager.

verify the URL works.

If the URL works then fail back to node1. from now on it shouldn't matter which node the db's are on the SSRS should function.

Hope this helps