Non-HTTPS enabled SSRS site does not work on a fresh Configuration Manager 2012 install

After adding the Reporting Services role to my ConfigMgr 2012 lab, I was immediately receiving errors such as “The underlying connection was denied: An unexpected error occurred on a send.” when I was trying to create or view reports in SSRS.

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After bringing up the Reporting Services Configuration Manager app within SQL 2008 R2, if I tested the Web Service URL for the report server, I was getting the standard error in IE “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” and if I tested the Report Manager URL, I was seeing the same error I get within the CM2012 admin console.

Looking at my component status messages for the SMS_SRS_REPORTING_POINT component, I was also receiving many Message ID 7403s - “The report server service is not running on Reporting Service Point Server “CM2012.russlab.com”; start the service to enable reporting”.  I verified the reporting service was running.

From my research, there are some methods in the reporting services webservices API that are inherently secure methods and if SSL is configured on a report server instance these methods cannot be invoked via http and require https connections.  Internally, since we leverage some of these APIs, we fail to perform some actions.

Unfortunately there is no easy workaround for this other than to not use SSL enabled report server instances. However there is a configuration setting that can be tweaked to get around this problem but it is NOT recommended to tweak this setting if the report server instance is hosting other reports (not specific to Configuration Manager).

To resolve this issue, I had to open the file rsreportserver.config in notepad which is where the SSRS configuration is stored.  The file is located in \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10_50.MSSQLSERVER\Reporting Services\ReportServer by default for SQL 2008 R2.

I modified the line that begins with <Add key=”SecureConnectionLevel” Value=”3”/> to following:

<Add key=”SecureConnectionLevel” Value=”0”/>

I restarted the SQL Reporting Services service for the MSSQLSERVER instance and all is functioning well with SSRS on my Configuration Manager 2012 lab.