Move SSRS 2008 Reports to a SSRS 2014 (or Above) Server

Problem:

There are more than 800 SSRS 2008 reports on an old server, and I will need to move them to a SSRS 2014 server which hosts some existing reports. Microsoft sample Reporting Services rs.exe script can be used to copy the content from old server to the new one.  However, the sample script only works for SQL Server 2008 R2 and above, and will not work for SQL Server 2008.

Solution:

The workaround is to migrate/copy all the reports to an empty SSRS 2014 server first, then run the Microsoft sample script to copy the reports from this SSRS 2014 server to the final destination server.

First step, merge all the SSRS 2008 reports from old server to the SSRS 2014 server, following the Microsoft online book: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/reporting-services/install-windows/migrate-a-reporting-services-installation-native-mode?view=sql-server-2017.

The next step is to copy the reports from the SSRS 2014 server to the destination server by running the Microsoft sample script “ssrs_migration.rss”, which can be downloaded from here. This article explains how to use the script.

Limitations

·         Passwords are not migrated, and must be re-entered (e.g. data sources with stored credentials, or subscriptions with stored credentials)