Configuring Kerberos with Sharepoint 2010 for Business Intelligence related features

One characteristic that I have different from many other famous bloggers is that I am very miser in appreciating something, and I do not appreciate anything on just the face value. SQL Server is not behind any other competitive products, but still there's a lot to take away and learn from other products too. I find many bloggers posting on their blogs how they are in love with SQL Server and each and every aspect of it. Even my bread and butter depends on MS BI and Sharepoint BI stack of technologies, but when you really love a product, you focus your energies to make it a world class product. Though you may not be on the marketing / sales / development team of the product, but you start feeling like one when your goals are aligned. In my views, though you may not be a famous blogger who would be getting millions of hits, hundreds or thousands of followers, still if you are making even little contribution to nurture the product that earns your bread and butter, I feel that you or I would rather say WE are as valuable as others. In summary, limit singing songs of praise brainlessly and treat your bread winning product as a businessman would treat his business.

Coming to the subject of this post, Microsoft has released a whitepaper titled "Configuring Kerberos Authentication for Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 Products". Sharepoint 2010 has changed the face of Business Intelligence by the addition of Performancepoint Services and Visio Services, along with Excel Services. Identity delegation and/or Impersonation is one of the issues that can block the entire access and execution mechanism of BI solution, if not configured properly.

With Microsoft, keeping up the pace is really hard whether it's with the ongoing releases of newer version like .NET or keeping oneself updated with tons of new information that gets released in the form of whitepapers. This whitepaper contains lot of How To topics related to Sharepoint and Kerberos, which also directly impacts BI solution design. I always fear that how would I deal with a project where entire set of BI products needs to be configured with Kerberos and for times like that, reference material like this is extremely useful.

Below mentioned are some of the general and BI scenarios covered in this whitepaper:

Scenario 1: Core Configuration
Scenario 2: Kerberos Authentication for SQL OLTP
Scenario 3: Identity Delegation for SQL Analysis Services
Scenario 4: Identity Delegation for SQL Reporting Services
Scenario 5: Identity Delegation for Excel Services
Scenario 6: Identity Delegation for Power Pivot for SharePoint
Scenario 7: Identity Delegation for Visio Services
Scenario 8: Identity Delegation for PerformancePoint Services
Scenario 9: Identity Delegation for Business Connectivity Services

You can download this whitepaper from here.