I am tasked with creating a new SSRS deployment to replace our current deployment, upgrading from SQL 20008 R2 on 32-bit to SQL 2012 on 64-bit. I have looked at SqlCat, specifically the Report Catalog Best Practices article - part of why I am asking this question.
Our current architecture is:
Web Head
Report Server - SSIS, SSRS, Datamarts
Due to network topology, we have some of our datamarts created in an integration server (close to production data) and then pushed to our report server.
I have not read anything to suggest that this is a "good plan." Currently, we do not support a large number of users - under 1.5K total, and under 200 since June 2012. Some ETLs are once a day, I have one configured at every half hour incrementally pulling data, however the data volume is also fairly low.
Does anyone use a configuration with their datamart living alongside their report database? Will segmenting the datamart from the report db cause a performance hit to report rendering (without caching) for users?
I will have very limited control over the network between any of our servers - I can request that they be located in the same installation, but most of it is IT black box - part of why I am wondering if same machine might help. The new machine would be virtualized, with 4 CPUs and 12+GB RAM, total disk size limited to 500GB but that can be split over as many separate disks as we would like.
I do not believe an additional VM would be an issue, even if it is I would rather argue for it if it is important.
I understand that what we are currently doing is not considered best practices, however I just want to get a sanity check of whether it is even agood process, or if there are any use cases where it makes sense.
Thanks,
Ahren