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Configure custom or forms authentication on the report server

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Reporting Services provides an extensible architecture that allows you to plug in custom or forms-based authentication modules. You might consider implementing a custom authentication extension if deployment requirements don't include Windows integrated security or Basic authentication. The most common scenario for using custom authentication is to support Internet or extranet access to a Web application. Replacing the default Windows Authentication extension with a custom authentication extension gives you more control over how external users are granted access to the report server.

In practice, deploying a custom authentication extension requires multiple steps that include copying assemblies and application files, modifying configuration files, and testing. This article focuses on just the authentication settings that you specify in the configuration files.

Note

Creating a custom authentication extension requires custom code and expertise in ASP.NET security. If you do not want to create a custom authentication extension, you can use Microsoft Entry ID groups and accounts, but you should greatly reduce the scope of a report server deployment. For more information about custom authentication, see Implement a security extension.

Additionally, you can use Forms authentication or a custom authentication extension in a SQL Server Reporting Services environment that is integrated with a SharePoint product. To do so, you must configure the SharePoint site to use the authentication method that you choose. For more information about configuring authentication in SharePoint, see Authentication samples on Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN).

Configure a report server to use custom authentication

  1. Open the rsreportserver.config in a text editor.

  2. Find the <Authentication> section.

  3. Copy the following XML structure:

    <Authentication>
      <AuthenticationTypes>
             <Custom />
      </AuthenticationTypes>
      <EnableAuthPersistence>true</EnableAuthPersistence>
</Authentication>

  4. Paste it over the existing entries for the <Authentication> section.

    You can't use Custom with other authentication types.

  5. Save the file.

  6. Open the Web.config file for the report server. By default, the file is located in the same folder as the rsreportserver.config file (see RsReportServer.config configuration file).

  7. Find authentication mode and set it to Forms.

    <authentication mode = "Forms" />

  8. Find identity impersonate and set it to False.

    <identity impersonate = "false" />

  9. Add the PassThroughCookies element structure to the configuration file. For more information, see Configure the web portal to pass custom authentication cookies

  10. Save the file.

  11. If you configured a scale-out deployment, repeat all of the previous steps for other report servers in the deployment.

  12. Restart the report server to clear any sessions that are currently open.

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