It has been years since I tried selecting the RS 2012 option that automatically configures Report Server at installation time. I vaguely remembered that there was a good reason never to use it, but I felt like I needed reminding. And there was.

The installations (on two servers) seemed to go well, but then I discovered that the report server web service was not working. It was reporting “Unable to connect to the remote server,” which was not helpful beyond serving as a Google search key.

The problem is that when you let it auto-configure, it sets up SSL ports for Report Server and Report Manager (never mind that there are no certificates), and locks the server down to ONLY use SSL. When you remove the SSL ports, it remains locked down (and effectively disabled) until you edit rsreportserver.config and change SecureConnectionLevel to zero. Now that’s security.

Thanks to Jess at dba.stackexchange.com for saving me two re-installs!