Disabling the recycle timeout settings in SSRS

ssrstimeout

In order to prevent periodic recycling of the SSRS service it's been suggested to disable the <RecycleTime> setting in the RS server's config file. I believe disabling would require setting this value to 0 (i.e., <RecycleTime>0</RecycleTime>). Is this correct?

Also, I've heard of alternate methods of scheduling an 'empty' report to run once an hour to ensure the idle time of 720 minutes is never reached. Is it recommended to use this approach instead of setting the <RecyleTime> setting to 0?

Best Answer

It's recommended to let SSRS recycle periodically so it doesn't hold onto memory it no longer needs, which may be useful to the rest of your server, for example if your SQL Server instance lives on the same server (you wouldn't want SSRS bottlenecking the rest of your SQL Server instance).

If you are able to adjust it to a recycle frequency that happens off-hours that may be best, as noted in this article. Otherwise the correct value is 0 to disable it, as you mentioned. For more information, see this other article Adjusting the SSRS service recycle time to zero seconds.