ION Enterprise 6.0 or SPM 7.0 Web Elements Configuration Fails due to SSL Encryption in SQL Reporting Services

The installation of ION Enterprise or SPM software fails while trying to configure the web elements or installing the Report Packs. The error can come in many forms due to the number of ways used to configure these elements.
In the ION Enterprise installer, or the RS2008WRConfigurationWizard, the error may display as:

"Cannot configure virtual roots"

In the SPM 7 installer, you may see the step "Installing Report Pack" fail with error:

"The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish secure channel for SSL/TLS."

It has been discovered that if an SSL Certificate is existing on a server prior to the SQL installation, SQL will notice it and automatically configure Reporting Services to use SSL encryption by default. This will result in errors that ION/SPM configuration tools and installers will not be able to overcome. Reporting Services needs to be configured so that SSL is disabled, and all SSL virtual roots have been removed.

There are two main steps that need to be performed in order for ION/SPM to perform the steps necessary during installation:

1. Remove the SSL Virtual Roots

There is a way to check for the presence of these SSL Virtual Roots by opening the SQL Reporting Services Configuration Manager. In this utility, by clicking the Web Service URL or Report Manager URL, you will see something like the image below, displaying both a root with port 80, and a root with port 443:

If there are two roots present, click Advanced, and in this dialogue box, there will be an option to select the SSL Root and delete it. Make sure to delete any SSL roots that are present on both Web Service URL and Report Manager URL pages. After doing this, proceed to step 2.

2. Reconfigure Reporting Services to disable SSL Encryption

There is a file titled rsreportserver.config that is located in the Reporting Services folder on the drive where SQL gets installed (the path varies depending on SQL version and OS, but the default path is 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10_50.ION\Reporting Services\ReportServer'). After locating this file, open it with a text editor and locate the line in the image below. The Value will set what level of SSL Encryption is required. Typically on an installation where this is an issue, it will be set to 2. Setting the value to 0 will disable SSL Encryption altogether.

After performing this edit, save the file and perform an IIS reset.

Once this step is done, run the RS2008WRConfigWizard (for ION E 6.0) or re-run the SPM Installer in Configure mode. The steps that failed before should complete, and configuration should be successful.

Verify the Virtual Roots and run some test reports in WebReporter/Reports to verify functionality.