How Do You Deploy SQL Server Reporting Services?

Currently, the Team Foundation Installation Guide instructs you to install SQL Server Reporting Services on the same server as the instance of SQL Server 2005 used by Team Foundation Server. The report server is implemented as a Microsoft Windows service and as an ASP.NET Web service that runs on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS).

However, security best practices suggest that you should isolate services to reduce the risk that one compromised service could be used to compromise others. For this reason, some IT professionals are adverse to installing IIS on the same server as SQL Server.

The Team Foundation product team is now considering how best to handle this situation. To that end, they would like input from you on the following questions:

  1. If your organization is currently using SQL Server Report Services, is it deployed on a separate server? If so, why?
  2. Does you organization have any policies regarding deployment of IIS and SQL Server on the same node in your network? Please choose from:
    1. No.
    2. Yes. We’d prefer not to do this, but we can make some exceptions.
    3. Yes. This goes against strict policy, and would block any deployment of a server requiring both IIS and SQL on the same node.

To participate, please copy & paste those questions with your answers in an e-mail and send it to me (robcaron@microsoft.com) by next week (Wednesday, July 20th), or enter a blog comment below.