How to force a Crystal Reports file to be processed by a specific Crystal Reports Server group (isolation)

In this quick document i am focusing a smaller piece of a bigger topic: How to troubleshoot intermittent issues in BI Platform where sharing some experiences from first steps of troubleshooting intermittently appearing issues on such BI platform 4.x where having more than one processing servers or nodes configured.

To isolate the report perform the following steps:

In Bi 4.x there are several Crystal Report servers available, separated by Crystal application type: Crystal Reports 20xx and Crystal Reports for Enterprise

Crystal Reports 2011/2013/2016

• CrystalReports20xxProcessingServer: this handles the requests (on-demand) for processing of reports that have been written in any version of Crystal Reports (not CR Enterprise)
• CrystalReports20xxReportApplicationServer: used for processing of the data for dynamic parameters in reports written in any version of Crystal. Also can be used through one of the SDK's for custom Crystal processing in other applications. (not CR Enterprise)
• CrystalReportsCacheServer: used for report page rendering and caching for all types of Crystal reports.

Crystal Repors for Enterprise

• CrystalReportsCacheServer: used for report page rendering and caching for all types of Crystal reports.
• CrystalReportsProcessingServer: Handles the on-demand processing of reports that have been written in Crystal for Enterprise only

To isolate the report, do the following steps:

1. Launch the CMC and go to Servers
2. Click Manage -> New -> Create Server Group
3. Type a name for the group as "Isolation Group"
4. Go to the Service Categories -> Crystal Reports Services
5. Select the following servers
   Crystal Reports 20xx
   Crystal Reports for Enterprise
   • CrystalReports20xxProcessingServer
   • CrystalReports20xxReportApplicationServer
   • CrystalReportsCacheServer
   • CrystalReportsProcessingServer
   • CrystalReportsCacheServer
     
     
     
     
6. Right click-> Select Add to Server Group and select "Isolation Group" and complete the workflow
7. In CMC go to Folders and locate and select the report file needs to be isolated in the environment
8. In Properties click Default Settings-> Viewing server group
   
   
   
   
9. In section Default servers to use for processing: select option Only use servers in the selected group and select "Isolation Group" from the list of groups
10. In section Default servers to use for caching: select option Only use servers in the selected group and select "Isolation Group" from the list of groups

NOTE: If the servers in the Server group are either not enabled or not running, the report will be not processed.