SSRS Enterprise vs Standard Edition

  • I need to install SSRS for report development and deployment. I don't work with it myself and I haven't had much luck trying to find the information I need. My boss would like me to install SSRS 2019 Enterprise Edition. It looks like there is just one download for SSRS 2019. Here are the questions I have.

    • Since the reporting databases for SSRS 2019 Enterprise can be on either Enterprise of Standard Edition servers, how does SSRS know if it is Enterprise or Standard Edition?
    • Does SSRS 2019 Enterprise Edition need to be installed on SQL Server 2019? I don't know if it's features are dependent on the database server or if they are just internal to SSRS.

    Our situation is the following. If the SSRS 2019 features are internal and not dependent on the SQL Server version, we'd like to host the reporting services databases on one of our SQL Server 2017 Enterprise servers instead of installing a SQL Server 2019 Enterprise Edition server just to host reporting services database.

    We've looked around trying to find these answers but despite a lot of MS's documentation getting a lot better, SSRS is still somewhat vague in their wording. I'd really like to not have to do this multiple times trying to get it right. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  • SSRS 2019 is part of SQL 2019, there is no separate licensing for SSRS, bu it requires SQL 2019 license, ie, SSRS 2019 standard requires SQL 2019 standard or enterprise and SSRS enterprise requires SQL 2019 enterprise; you don't have to install SQL 2019 if you don't use it, install SSRS 2019 enterprise on 12-core box requires 12-core SQL 2019 enterprise licenses. I use SSRS 2017 and the reportserver database is on SQL 2016 and it works fine. Not sure how Microsoft checks the edition is standard or enterprise, though.

  • Thank you for the information. This helps a lot.

  • Are you planning on scaling-out your deployment - if not, then I see no reason not to host everything for SSRS on the same server.  It has to be licensed the same anyways so the only disadvantage would be system resources - which are quite minimal for the actual databases.

    If you are planning on a scale-out deployment, then separating the databases from the web services makes sense, as that way each reporting services system only has those services available.

    As far as I can tell - the version of the database engine won't be a problem, but the Edition will be...for SSRS Enterprise the databases will need to be installed on an Enterprise instance of the database engine.

    Jeffrey Williams
    “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

    ― Charles R. Swindoll

    How to post questions to get better answers faster
    Managing Transaction Logs

  • Jeffrey Williams wrote:

    As far as I can tell - the version of the database engine won't be a problem, but the Edition will be...for SSRS Enterprise the databases will need to be installed on an Enterprise instance of the database engine.

    According the the MS docs I was able to find, it said that SSRS Enterprise databases could be hosted on either Enterprise or Standard Edition.

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/reporting-services/reporting-services-features-supported-by-the-editions-of-sql-server-2016?view=sql-server-ver15#edition-requirements-for-the-report-server-database

    It's one of the few things that I was actually able to find but everything else was not clear at all, at least not to me. For instance, if there is only one download for SSRS 2019, how does it know if it's Enterprise or Standard?

    We're also keeping the SSRS server separate from the database server. We don't want issues with configuration problems to affect the production box. The person working with SSRS had already had issues that caused him to uninstall and reinstall SSRS to fix a configuration issue and that would not be a good thing on our production box.

  • You can use Standard Edition to support the databases for Enterprise SSRS, but it doesn't save you anything since you already have to license the SSRS instance at Enterprise Edition prices (with SA if you want to be able to install PowerBI Report Server).

    Since you are keeping this separate from production and you don't appear to have any requirements to scale-out your deployment, then I would not host the databases on that (or another) server.  Install the database engine and reporting services on a single system - which makes the installation and configuration much easier to manage and maintain.

    You don't have to 'spin' up another server to host SQL Server 2019 Enterprise Edition - but you do have to 'spin' up a new server to host SSRS 2019 and that must be licensed the same.  Because you have to license it anyways - installing the database engine and reporting services on the same machine requires the exact same licensing.

    Jeffrey Williams
    “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

    ― Charles R. Swindoll

    How to post questions to get better answers faster
    Managing Transaction Logs

  • Great point about putting SQL Server on the SSRS box since the licensing cost is the same. And we're not concerned about scaling out at this point since this will be for a small group of users. Thanks Jeffery.

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