OCS R2 Monitoring Server SQL Reporting Services Configuration Issues

I installed the OCS R2 Monitoring Server role on Server 2008 x64 with SQL 2008 SP1 and had a few issues until I realized installing SQL reporting services is not enough, you must then launch Reporting Services Configuration Manager. Never having installed Reporting Services, let alone on SQL 2008, I learned a few lessons.

Make sure you have installed IIS and Message Queuing prior to installing SQL (yeah, basic I know). Also, request and accept a certificate into your cert store for web services with the FQDN of the server where you will be hosting the reporting services URL. You will need this for Reporting Services configuration as well as for IIS. It is easier to have it during the install.

Having installed reporting services but not configured it, I ran the deploy Monitoring Server Reports with the error that it could not find the Report Server URL.

To resolve:

I deactivated the OCS Monitoring server and waited for replication. (note: I did not uninstall the Monitoring server files)
I uninstalled SQL 2008 Reporting Services
I verified IIS and MSMQ were installed
I requested a web cert (internal PKI) with the FQDN of the hosting server and installed into the cert store.
After a reboot I reinstalled SQL 2008 Reporting services.
I launched Reporting Services Configuration from program files and was asked to set or verify the following:

1. Service Account (runs the report service)
2. Web Service URL for port 80 and 443 (url to access the report server) - URL's look likes this by default:

http://%servernamefqdn%:80/ReportServer
https://%servernamefqdn%:443/ReportServer

OCS Requires https, which is why you need the certificate.


3. Database (for report server content and application data) - I asked it to use an existing database called report server.

4. Report Manager URL (url to access report manager)

http://%servernamefqdn%:80/Reports
https://%servernamefqdn%:443/Reports


5. SMTP settings (for report server e-mail)
6. Execution Account (low privileged account for report data)

After running through the configurations above, I made note of the URL in the config manager and reran the OCS Monitoring Server activation wizard and rebooted.

It still failed, but this time with a different error, stating the Reporting Services had not been initialized. Earlier errors stated it could not find https:// url reporting services was looking for by default.

After reading a lot of msdn and technet articles on initializing a reporting server and frankly not understanding most of it, I went back into Reporting Services Configuration > Database and instead of using an existing database, created a new one called reportserver1. If you want to follow the articles about encyrpting and decrypting keys etc, just search initializing sql databases and you'll find your way.

After pointing to a "new" database, I was then able to "initialize" the report server.

I reran the Deploy Monitoring Server Reports and finally it was sucessful.

Most of the above could have been avoided had a figured out I need to configure reporting services before running the OCS Wizard - live and learn. And today I learned about reporting services.