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Part IX: Business Intelligence
Backing Up the Catalog
The Reporting Services catalog consists of two SQL Server databases: ReportServer and
ReportServertempdb. ReportServer is critical to backup because it contains your
reports, metadata, and source — all your designed, permanent objects are stored here.
ReportServertempdb contains report snapshots and user session information and can be
re-created by re-creating the ReportServer database, but it is much better to restore the
table structure from a backup. Because these members of the catalog are SQL Server databases,
they can be backed up natively or using any third-party tool that supports SQL Server. SQL
Server 2012 integrated mode introduces a third database to the catalog, the ReportServerAlerts
database, which as the name implies, contains the metadata for data alerts.For more information on backing up and restoring SQL Server, see Chapter 21, “Backup and Recovery
Planning.”When considering the frequency of backups, the key question is, “How much loss can my
organization tolerate?” If mission critical reports are deployed every day, you should prob-
ably back up the ReportServer database daily, if not more frequently. If reports and other
metadata change less frequently, you can adjust downward. Always remember to test your
backups. Can you actually restore from them? Don’t wait to fi nd out they are corrupt the
day your server suffers a disk failure.Backing Up the Symmetric Encryption Key
Sensitive data inside Reporting Services is encrypted with three keys: the public and pri-
vate keys (managed by the operating system) and a symmetric key, which can be backed up
and restored. The only way to access your sensitive data should a migration or failure occur
is to restore both the Reporting Services catalog and the symmetric key.You can back up and restore the symmetric key in the Reporting Services Confi guration
manager, located under Start ➪ All Programs ➪ Microsoft SQL Server 2012 ➪ Confi guration
Tools ➪ Reporting Services Confi guration Manager, as shown in Figure 56-10. You should
create a backup of your Encryption key as part of the initial installation.If you are in integrated mode, the encryption key can be backed up from the Key
Management interface under Central Admin, as shown in Figure 56-11. To back up the
encryption key in SharePoint perform the following from Central Admin:- Select Application Management ➪ Manage Service Applications.
- Select the particular Reporting Service Service Application with which you are
working. - Select Key management ➪ Backup Encryption Key.
- Enter a password and verify that password.
- Select Export. The encryption key will be saved to your download folder.
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