On occasions I have received the error ‘Maximum request length exceeded.’ when trying deploy an SSRS report.

The Cause

The problem comes from the report being too big for the size allowed by SSRS. The report probably has embedded objects like images or PDFs.

The Solution

1. Try and reduce the size of the embedded objects
2. Increase the maximum size allowed

Increasing the Maximum size of reports

Update the httpRuntime setting in web.config.
Depending on your installation, the web.config file can be found in one of the following two locations…

• C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS11.MSSQLSERVER\Reporting Services\ReportServer
• C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services\SSRS\ReportServer

 <configuration>
    <system.web>
        <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="51200" executionTimeout="3600"/>
    </system.web>
</configuration> 

Simply saving the web.config file forces a reload of the Reporting service.

Notes

• The default size is 4MB.
• It is measured in KB, so the above is 50MB.
• I have seen a few people use 1,048,576, or 1GB, but I like to set my Max a little lower to encourage report developers to think about the size of their reports.
• I have set the timeout also, because I figure that larger documents will take longer.

Troubleshooting

If, after making the change, you get prompted to login, when you normally wouldn’t, it could be a sign that you have done something wrong, go back and check the settings.