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wanted to ask if my design is on the right track for installing SSRS.
Currently i have 2 nodes in an Always ON AG (2017 Enterprise Edition). There is an application update coming up that will require the use of SSRS. No users will access the SSRS portals and the application will display the reports.

If the SSRS server is not available the application will work unless you go to the section that shows the reports, but everything else will work.

My question is, should I stand up SSRS on the two SQL Nodes in a scale out deployment and have them sitting behind my Net Scaler load balancer? Should I just setup a 3rd box and get SSRS installed on a separate box to make the config simple like a 3rd node (Sync or Async) with manual failover to host the ssrs server and its databases?

Just trying to see what is the best angle to go here to give me the lease amount of headaches in the future.

I think the scale out deployment is a good way to go due to not having yet another server to manage, but i then need to depend on the net scaler admin to make sure they are doing their jobs in the setup, but i would like to get some feedback from you guys.

Thanks,

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  • You might be able to avoid using the Net Scaler by creating your scale-out RS deployment on your AG replicas and using the AG listener name for the host name in your RS URLs. This way the active SQL replica will also be the active SSRS node, and when SQL fails over it will also shift to the other RS node. Note: You need to configure automatic restarts of Agent and RS services when using AAG to host the RS DBs or it won't failover correctly. Also, make sure you have good backups of your RS encryption keys
    – HandyD
    Mar 24, 2021 at 3:19

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You have to take in count that a 3rd box with SSRS counts more license. In that case you have to place the SSRS databases on the alwayson cluster and the SSRS website on the 3rd box. You will not have HA solution for it and you will suffer downtime for server maintenance.

Otherways, if you choose the scale out deployment on the alwayson cluster with a net balancer in front of it you will have redundancy and no increase in license costs. But you need a new component in the architecture, a network balancer. You can't enable microsoft NLB on the clusters' nodes because it is not compatible with the cluster itself.

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  • Licensing is not much of a concern since the vSphere Hosts are fully licensed. However i do agree with you on the HA component, and there already is a Load Balancer in the Enterprise so no new licensing. I would say that this config, even though its a bit more complicated would be less maintenance over time due to not having a 3rd box that needs to be patched and taking up resources. Thanks guys this gives me the some good ideas on the architecture.
    – Marcin Wilczek
    Mar 24, 2021 at 17:22

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