I was setting up the BCS team lab, and one of the steps is to install a new vCenter 4.0 U1 server with a SQL 2008 back end. During the installation, the installer complained about port 80 was in use. From the past experience, I quickly checked if IIS is running on the server. There was not.
A quick “netstat –a” shows port 80 is listening to any incoming request. To find what service was using the port you can use “netstat –bna” the result shows the service that using the port was “SQLserver.exe” Wow, since when SQL server starts to use port 80? I took a look at SQL server configuration manager. There a list of services. One that came into the spot light was “SQL server reporting service” I recalls on SQL 2005 when Microsoft introduces the reporting service, IIS was a required service. Since IIS is not running, how did reporting service start itself? Right after I turn off SQL reporting service I can move the installation forward. (So the reporting service was the one holding port 80). Did a quick research on SQL 2008’s reporting service, here is the reason:
“Reporting Services no longer depends on IIS to provide access to the SOAP endpoint. URLs no longer include Web sites in IIS. Reporting Services uses HTTP.SYS directly to listen for requests on a specific port that you define for report server URLs.”
In case you need to use SQL 2008 reporting service on the same server where vCenter installed, keep in mind this could prevent vCenter from starting even it already installed. Make sure you either change the port for the reporting service or your vCenter’s port to avoid any issues
