How can I test an SSRS 2012 environment on production

Question

I have a SharePoint 2010 site with SSRS 2008 running. I'd like to dabble with SSRS 2012 to check report compatibility, etc. Can anyone advise on how I can go about standing up an SSRS 2012 instance, even implementing it on my production site, without "taking over" or "affecting" the current SSRS 2008 instance?

So for example, I have a subsite on my sharepoint site called Sales. Within Sales, I have a number of RDL reports emailing daily on schedules. I would like to stand up my 2012 instance anywhere on my sharepoint site, just so I can create some schedules, test reports, etc. but not affect my Sales reports in any way.

Any advice is appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

I don't think you can have co-existing versions of SSRS in SharePoint Integrated Mode within the same farm.

You could set up a single server test farm, with SQL 2012 as the back-end database and enabled SSRS 2012 there and "dabble" with it. I would do this with a Virtual machine, but obviously a physical machine would work too.

Alternatively, you could set up the SQL 2012 server and SSRS 2012 in stand-alone (not sharepoint integrated) mode, and dabble with the new 2012 features there. You can test the schedules, test reports, etc. in the standalone SSRS 2012 instance. Once you make the decision that everything works, replace the existing SSRS 2008 integrated instance with the SSRS 2012 instance.