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Preparing to run the SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) collector

Setting up pre-requisites for running the collector

Make sure that the machine from where you are running the collector meets the following hardware and software requirements.

Table 1.

Item

Requirement

Hardware (for on-premise runs only)

Note: The following specs are based upon running one collector process at a time. Please adjust the hardware if you are running multiple collectors at the same time.

RAM

8 GB

CPU

2 Ghz processor

Software (for on-premise runs only)

Docker

Click here to get Docker.

data.world specific objects (for both cloud and on-premise runs)

Dataset

You must have a ddw-catalogs dataset set up to hold your catalog files when you are done running the collector.

If you are using Catalog Toolkit , follow these instructions to prepare the datasets for collectors.

Network connection

Allowlist IPs and domains



Preparing SSRS for collectors

Creating a new role

Important

You need to setup a new role only if you want to data sources and policies. Otherwise you can skip this task and use the Browser role.

To set up a new Role in SSRS with permissions to harvest data sources and policies:

  1. Open SQL Server Management Studio as an Administrator.

  2. From the Object Explorer, click on Connect > Reporting Services.

  3. Connect to your SSRS instance.

  4. In the Object Explorer, navigate to Security > Roles

  5. Right click on Roles and select New Role

  6. Name the role. For example, data.world viewer or Content Viewer.

  7. Ensure the following Tasks are selected:

    • View reports

    • View resources

    • View folders

    • View data sources (allows harvesting of data sources)

    • View models

    • Consume reports

    • Set security for individual items (allows harvesting of policies, optional)

    See the reporting services documentation for complete details on creating roles.

Configuring Authentication

The collector harvests from SSRS using Basic or NTLM authentication.

To configure the authentication:

  1. If you are using basic authentication [with a local machine user] and your SSRS instance does not have basic authentication configured, follow the instructions in the Microsoft documentation to set up basic authentication on your SSRS environment.

  2. Create a domain user (recommended) or a local machine user that the collector will use for authentication and harvesting of SSRS objects.

  3. Grant the user access to the report server and apply the Browser role or the apply the new role, with permissions to harvest data sources and policies.

  4. Depending on your instance of SSRS, you may need to set permissions at the folder level.

    1. Navigate to the root folder or set of folders that you want to harvest resources from.

    2. Choose Manage Folder from the menu.

    3. Select the user you set up for running the collector.

These authentication details are used while configuring the CLI for the collector.

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