We have a Report Services 2008 R2 and Report Services 2012 instance. I need to migrate both of these instances to a fresh 2012 instance.
Part of the migration process involves backing up and restoring encryption keys, as well as backing up and restoring the ReportServer database. How does this work if there are 2 databases to backup/restore?
I am thinking it may be easier to find a migration utility that can help me migrate reports from both instances over to the new 2012 instance.
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.
I'll assume that your data sources contain database credentials that are encrypted; that is almost always the case. If the data sources are published as shared sources and there aren't very many of them, you can re-create the shared data sources first, possibly entering the sensitive information by hand, and then republish the reports (making sure not to overwrite existing shared sources). The same should apply to other shared resources, but I can't say that I have worked with those as much (shared datasets, report parts).
If you develop your own reports containing embedded data sources, you might be able to convert them to use shared sources before republishing to the new server.
These reports, data sets, and data source files are really just XML text files. You can download them from existing servers and upload them to a new server. You can modify them using an ordinary text editor, although an XML editor would be preferred and BIDS or Visual Studio offers specialized operations that can save you time.
In my work I have sometimes created VBScript files that can be executed using the RS utility supplied with SSRS. I used to use a utility call RS Scripter which was old and was only available as an exe the last time I looked, but which still worked the last time I tried it. I just Googled it and found plenty of hits so it looks like it is alive and well.
RS Scripter creates VBScript files and batch files that you can customize according to your needs and then execute to publish to a new server. My customizations consisted mainly of adding the password information back in before publishing, and pointing to the right servers and report folders.
I also see something called from Microsoft. I haven't tried that one but it might be worth a look.