Using SSL/TLS Certificates

SSRS and PBIRS with SSL/TLS Certificates

Both SSRS and Power BI Report Server (PBIRS) use HTTP SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) service to establish encrypted connections to a report server. Transport Layer Security (TLS) was previously known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

Certificates for WSU Report Servers

As of 2021, we are using DigiCert's "CertCentral Enterprise" site to request and store certificates for ReportSrv2, ReportSrv5 (Power BI), etc. Matt Rink has been our IT contact and he manages certs for all sorts of uses on campus.

There are two main processes to adding a certificate to SSRS (identical for PBIRS): making the certificate request (generating the CSR) and adding the certificate in SSRS.

Generating the CSR

To generate the CSR, we use Windows "Certificates" MMC following the directions in this handy write-up from DigiCert: Generating a Certificate Request

The WSU-specific properties of the certificate for ReportSrv5, for example, look like this...

...apart from that, we pretty much follow the script in the PDF above (we chose the most recent version of IIS when we were asked what kind of server the cert was for).

Adding the Certificate to SSRS

Once we've gotten a certificate file back from DigiCert, we can make use of it in SSRS (and PBIRS) by following the steps in this article: Adding a Cert in SSRS

One way that our experience diverges from the instructions in the PDF above is that we add the certificate only under the "Web Service URL" section of the Report Server Configuration Manager. The instructions tell us to also set up the cert under the "Web Portal URL" section, but that does not appear to be necessary. This is how the setup of ReportSrv5 looked in fall 2021:

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