SQL Reporting Services – The report server is not responding

Today I received the following error on one of my SQL Reporting Services Servers.

“The report server is not responding. Verify that the report server is running and can be accessed from this computer”

Old Solution

This is certainly not the first time I have seen this error, and the situation is always different.  Most of the time the solution is to add the proper permissions for the reporting services service account and ASPNET account to the following folders.

C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL.1Reporting ServicesReportManager

C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL.1Reporting ServicesReportServer

To identify if this is your problem, then go look at the reporting services error log.  It will be obvious as you will see an access denied message with one or both of the above paths.

HINT: When you change the permissions make sure inheritance is turned on for everything under that folder.

New Solution

Today it was a new issue.  Here is what I saw in the error log this time.

ERROR: Throwing Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.ReportServerDatabaseLogonFailedException: The report server cannot open a connection to the report server database. The logon failed

What makes this tricky is that your first thought is the service account running the Reporting Services Service has an issue.  That can certainly be the case if the password for that account was changed, but not updated on the service.  If the server had been rebooted or the service restarted then the service would fail to start.  Just because the service is running does not mean that there is not an issue.  If the server was not rebooted or the service was not restarted then the service will still be running and you will be none the wiser, until you see the failed authentications in the server security log.

Don’t jump to conclusions, because the reporting services service account was not the culprit this time.  Remember when you first installed and configured reporting services?  One of the options you define is the account that reporting services uses to access the report database.  That was the culprit today.  Someone changed the service account password on the account I setup for reporting services to access the report server.  Changing the password for the account in RS is very simple.  Open the Reporting Services Configuration utility and navigate to the Database Setup node.  Here you will see the account configured for Reporting Services to access the report database.  You can change the account or update the password.