Rickey Whitworth's Blog

I’ve struggled fo a couple of weeks to find out how to use a host header with SQL
Reporting Services. I think I have struggled mainly because I’ve just gotten too dependent
on Google handing me the answer to my questions. And there weren’t any combinations
of Host Headers, DNS and SQL Reporting Services that gave me anywhere close to an
answer.

Let’s say you successfully install SQL Reporting Services to the default website. Incidentally
this is the only place it can be installed, but you can move the virtual directories
for Reports and ReportServer to another website by following the directions here .
When the install is complete and you have published a report, you can access a report
by going to http://SERVER/Reports from your
internal network.

But what if you want to access a report from the external network? Well, that shouldn’t
be a problem because you are only using port 80 (HTTP). The problem that does arise
is that you need to specify a fully qualified domain name, like http://SERVER.company.com/reports .
You may experience this problem even if you just want to use a fully qualified domain
name internally. If you add a host header to your website in IIS Manager, and try
to access it with this fqdn, it will not work.

The first step is to change the following two registry values under this key to the
appropriate new values:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Reporting
Services\

RSVirtualDir = http://server.company.com/ReportServer  
(Old Value was http://server/ReportServer)

WAVirtualDir = http://server.company.com/Reports (Old
Value was http://server/Reports)

You will of course need to make an entry on your internal and external DNS server
(assuming you want external access).  Now if you type in the fqdn you will see
the report manager and the appropriate folders. But if you click on a report you will
get a Page Not Found Error.

The final piece of the puzzle is to make a change in the following to config files
on your reporting server:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Reporting Services\ReportServer\RSReportServer.config

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Reporting Services\ReportManager\RSWebApplication.config

Each file will contain one instance of the server referenced by name
(http://server/ReportServer).
Replace it with the fully qualified domain name, keeping the trailing directory (http://server.company.com/ReportServer)

Now just restart the service and you should be able to access the reports inside or
out using a fully qualified domain name.

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