Deploy multiple instance of reporting services or connect to multiple versions of DLLs

Question

Is there any way in SSRS2008 to deploy multiple instances of the ReportServer running separate code sets?

I'm developing a very specific deployment of reporting services where I have a number of custom extensions plugged in. But, my company typically deploys multiple versions of a release at once on the same server. I'm at a little bit of a loss of a good way to do this with reporting services.

I know that I have a few alternatives:

• Run multiple instances of Reporting Services with different code sets

The downside to this is that it's a little bit of a headache to upgrade and I'd rather not have multiple instances of the reporting databases. I'm not sure if they would play well together if they were targeting the same databases.

• Invoke/include the version specific DLLs on demand by reading from an HTTPRequest variable. (Assembly.LoadFile)

I have a feeling that this could have performance issues and it also sounds like a potential debugging nightmare. I have also not used Assembly.LoadFile before and I'm unsure of how much code I'd have to write that was unversioned to control the versioning system.

Anyone out there have experience with any of this?

Answer 1

FWIW I have been running two separate report server installations against the same databases without issues. The volumes are fairly low.

Answer 2

You can install multiple RS front ends onto one DB backend.

It works well. We use it to have 2 primary RS boxes (load balanced) with 3rd BCP/DR hot standby box. They are all in the farm.

You can have multiple instances on the same box too.

How to: Configure a Report Server Scale-Out Deployment (Reporting Services Configuration)