Support for high availability in Report Server

High availability support in Report Server

High availability (HA) refers to the systems that are durable and likely to function continuously without failure for a long period of time. It also refers to the ability of users to obtain a good service or access the system.

Perfect high availability systems avoid having single point of failure; any hardware or software component that fails has redundant component of same type. So, the system can be in available state even when occurring failures.

Benefits of high availability

Usage of high availability includes the following major benefits:

Planned outages

HA reduces the impact to users or customers whenever they need to take systems or data offline to perform necessary maintenance tasks, such as backups or changing of new hardware or software.

Unplanned outages

HA provides protection from unplanned outages caused by human error, software problems, hardware failures, and other environmental issues.

Backup window reduction

HA reduces the time consumption of the system or services that are unavailable during the backups. The time it takes to complete a backup is called a backup window. The challenge is to back up everything in the window within short period of time.

Load balancing

HA can automatically direct the client requests to servers with high work loading capacity. Configured applications are not depended only on particular server. It can distribute connections and workloads among servers to reduce the demands on individual servers.

Redundancy and failover

HA removes the single point of failure by providing complete redundant system. If one of the servers in collective fails, another server can quickly take over the role of failed server and provide services.

Configure Report Server with high availability

To configure the Report Server with high availability in Azure VMs, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com/
2. Create a new virtual machine by filling the following appropriate details:

• Use any existing resource group or create a new resource group.
• Give a name for the Virtual Machine (VM).
• Select the availability set in the availability options, and create a new availability set or use an existing one if exists. If a new availability set is created, specify the count of fault domain and update domain.
• Choose the Windows Server OS image and size.
• Set administrator account credentials.
• Click Review + Create.

3. After the final validation is passed, click Create to initiate the deployment of the VM. This may take a few minutes and you can check the status from the notification bar.

4. Create another VM of same configuration with a different name in the same region and same resource group.
5. While selecting availability set for second VM, instead of creating a new one, select the existing availability set created for the first VM. Leave all other settings as default.

6. After the VM deployment is completed, select the availability set from the resource. You can see the two VMs listed in the availability set with Fault and Update domain listed as 0 and 1 as follows.

7. Now, follow the steps given under Network security group (firewall) in the following link to bind the port in firewall. https://reports.syncfusion.com/documentation/report-server/installation-and-deployment/azure-deployment/vm/#network
8. Then, follow the steps given here to connect the virtual machine. https://reports.syncfusion.com/documentation/report-server/installation-and-deployment/azure-deployment/vm/#connect-to-syncfusion-report-server-virtual-machine
9. After connecting the VM, install IIS and its features in that VM and follow the given link to enable the Report Server’s required IIS features.

https://www.syncfusion.com/kb/8000/what-are-the-features-needed-to-be-enabled-in-iis-to-run-report-server-application

10. After the required features are enabled, install and configure the Report Server in VM by following the steps in https://reports.syncfusion.com/documentation/report-server/application-startup/startup/#configure-report-server
    Note:

    Configure the Report Server with the centralized database and storage such as SQL and Azure Blob storage, which should be accessible from any connected VMs within an availability set.

11. After the configuration is completed in first VM, connect the second VM and enable the required IIS features as mentioned above, also manually move the ‘AppData’ folder from the installed location of first VM to second VM.

Now, the application with the same configuration is in running state on two VMs within the same availability set.

Confirming high availability

You can confirm the high availability of VMs by shutting down any of the single VM in the availability set and ensuring that the configured report application is running on another machine with the same set.

Hence, the redundancy of application can be achieved, and the single point of failure can be avoided in high availability.

Reference links

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/Azure/virtual-machines/windows/manage-availability

https://dzone.com/articles/design-for-virtual-machines-with-high-availability

https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/availability-set-fault-domains-and-update-domains-in-azure-virtual-machie/