Configuring Bold Reports Report Server for Warm Standby Deployment

Overview

A Warm Standby deployment helps improve business continuity by maintaining a secondary Bold Reports Report Server instance that can be activated when the primary server becomes unavailable.

In this setup, the standby server remains available and ready for failover operations. While the failover process itself is typically managed by the infrastructure team, certain Bold Reports configurations are required to ensure that the standby server can continue serving users when needed.

This article explains the recommended configuration for deploying Bold Reports Report Server in a Warm Standby environment.

Prerequisites

Before configuring Warm Standby, ensure the following requirements are met:

• A primary Bold Reports Report Server installation is available.
• A secondary Bold Reports Report Server installation is available for standby purposes.
• Both servers are running the same Bold Reports version.
• Both servers have network access to the required shared resources.
• Appropriate failover or disaster recovery procedures are established within the infrastructure.

Configure a Common Report Server Database

The primary and standby Report Server instances should use the same Report Server database.

This ensures that application information such as reports, users, permissions, schedules, settings, and other metadata remain available regardless of which server is active.

Recommendations

• Use a highly available database deployment whenever possible.
• Verify connectivity to the database from both servers.
• Ensure that both servers are configured with identical database connection settings.

Configure a Shared AppData Location

The AppData directory contains content and application data required for Report Server operations.

To support Warm Standby deployments, configure both servers to use the same AppData location.

Recommendations

• Store AppData in a shared network location.
• Ensure read and write permissions are granted to both Report Server installations.
• Verify that the shared location remains accessible during failover scenarios.
• Configure both servers to use the same AppData path.

Example

\\FileServer\BoldReports\AppData

Verify Application Configuration

To ensure a successful failover experience, verify that both Report Server installations are configured consistently.

Validate the Following

• Same Bold Reports version.
• Same application configuration.
• Same database connection settings.
• Same AppData location.
• Same certificates and security settings (if applicable).
• Same required dependencies and system prerequisites.

Validate the Warm Standby Deployment

After completing the configuration:

1. Verify that both servers can connect to the Report Server database.
2. Verify that both servers can access the shared AppData location.
3. Confirm that reports and resources are accessible from the active server.
4. Perform a planned failover according to your infrastructure procedure.
5. Verify that the standby server can successfully access reports and application resources.

Infrastructure Responsibilities

The following components are typically managed by the infrastructure team:

• Database high availability.
• Database replication.
• Shared storage availability.
• DNS failover.
• Load balancer configuration.
• Disaster recovery planning.
• Monitoring and alerting.

Bold Reports Requirements

For a successful Warm Standby deployment:

• Install the same Bold Reports version on both servers.
• Configure both servers to use the same Report Server database.
• Configure both servers to use the same AppData location.
• Ensure appropriate permissions are available on shared resources.
• Maintain consistent application settings across both installations.

Conclusion

Warm Standby is primarily an infrastructure-level disaster recovery strategy. From the Bold Reports perspective, the primary and standby servers should be configured to use the same Report Server database and shared AppData location while maintaining identical application configurations. Once these requirements are met, the standby server can be activated during failover events to help maintain reporting service availability.

Related Articles

• Set up a High Availability Environment in Windows Using Shared Folder for Bold Reports

This article explains how to configure a High Availability environment for Bold Reports using a shared folder approach. While High Availability and Warm Standby are different deployment strategies, the concepts around shared storage and common application resources may help when planning a Warm Standby deployment.