Thursday, March 31, 2011

The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized

I recently implemented a SharePoint farm with Reporting Services installed on a remote server in SharePoint Integrated mode. After configuring everything and uploading a report a document library, I received the error "The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized" when I tried to manage the report subscriptions from a client machine. I was able to access all the Report Server functions as long as I was on the server itself, but as soon as I moved to a client machine - no luck.

Research indicated that the proper solution was to enable Kerberos and make sure that the servers and accounts invloved were setup properly for delegation, and that the correct SPN's existed. For a variety of reasons, this was not possible and I needed to find a way to resolve the issue outside of Kerberos.

The work around was to configure the Reporting Services integration in Cemtral Administration to use a Trusted Account rather than Windows authentication. Here's the steps needed to accomplish that:

Open Cntral Administartion and click General Application Settings:



 Next, select Reporting Services Integration:


Next, change the Authentication mode from Windows Authentication to Trusted Account. Enter credentials of an account that is an administrator