You cannot use a trial license key for a distributed Tableau Server installation. For less than 40-core clusters, use 8-core nodes, and in clusters greater than 40-cores, use 16-core nodes. High availability is natively supported on server clusters with three or more nodes; each node contributes to the quorum, and the group helps verify each others health. For details, see Generate the node bootstrap file. For more information, see the Tableau Server scalability white paper. Please note: If you are running Tableau Server from version 10 to version 2018.1 (without Tableau Services Manager), please see the High Availability Whitepaper for Tableau 10. If you are running Tableau Server in a virtual environment, use your VM host's best practices for vCPU allocation in relation to the number of physical CPU cores on the VM host. If you are adding Tableau Prep Conductor to your Tableau Server installation, we recommend you add a second node and dedicate this to running Tableau Server Prep Conductor. If you are installing Tableau Server in a virtual environment or a cloud-based deployment, see Virtual Machines and Public Cloud Deployments section later in this topic. Brad consults with Tableaus most performance-conscious clients to ensure their environments are running optimally. Ahigh availability Tableau Server installation is a special type of distributed installation, designed to accommodate failure in key server components without loss of complete server functionality. Index and Search Server : Index and Search Server memory can be configured to improve performance by using the indexandsearchserver.vmopts TSM configuration option. His background is in networking, IT services development and virtualization/storage architecture. For more information, see Configure Client File Service . Review the corresponding link to the hardware platform that fits your enterprise standards: If you deploy Tableau Server in the cloud, using dedicated hardware and static allocation of RAM eliminates varied performance due to resource contention. Step 3: Load Testing Active/Passive Repository across two nodes.
The most basic way to run Tableau Server is to install a single node.
For more information, see Minimum hardware requirements for installation. For information about moving the License service and TSM Controller from the initial node to another node, see Recover from an initial node failure below. 2003-2022 Tableau Software, LLC, a Salesforce Company.
Choose just the right amount of redundancy to fulfill your business SLAs and sleep well at night knowing you have the most reliable enterprise analytics platform on the market. As you monitor and gather data about the performance and usage, you can fine tune and configure the number of instances for these processes. For example, on the node where it is dedicated to running backgrounder, initially, you can set the number of backgrounders to minimum (total number of cores divided by four), and increase the number of backgrounder processes later if you find that: Extract refreshes are taking a long time to complete, Subscriptions and alerts are not completing on time. Generate a node configuration (bootstrap) file on the initial node. When you install the backgrounder, Tableau Server automatically installs one instance of the Data Engine. The diagram below illustrates how to plan for a range of RTO requirements: These baseline configurations may not be enough as your needs change and grow, and you might need to scale your Tableau Server beyond these configurations. There is less redundancy and fewer safeguards in the event of a problem with one of the server processes. All server processes are running on a single machine. For details on how to deploy a Coordination Service ensemble on your cluster, see Deploy a Coordination Service Ensemble . Eric is also a contributing author to Tableau Your Data! This is only a starting point and should not be considered a hard sizing rule beyond the initial deployment. For Tableau Server the RPO cannot be shorter than the time it takes to complete a full backup of your server. This topic describes three baseline architectures that can be used as starting points for your Tableau Server installations. Adding an external load balancer to make sure your installation is robust to Gateway failures and make sure that requests only get routed to functioning Gateway processes. The subset of Tableau Server that require a valid Tableau Server license are considered "licensed processes.". Index and Search Server across all the three nodes. Three processes run only on the initial node and cannot be moved to any other node except in a failure situation, the License Service (License Manager), Activation Service, and TSM Controller (Administration Controller). For more information, see Mission-critical reliability for high-availablity and disaster-recovery concepts and white papers. For more information on performance tuning, see Performance Tuning topic. In general, the considerations and recommendations described in this topic apply to virtual environment and cloud deployments. HA in Tableau Server is mainly achieved by: File redundancy with multiple File Store/Data Engine instances. The successful functioning of Tableau Server depends on a properly functioning Coordination Service. Highly available (HA) installationAn HA installation of Tableau Server is a special type of multi-node installation with a minimum of three nodes and multiple instances of key processes (the Repository, File Store/Data Engine (Hyper), Coordination Service, and Client File Service) on different computers. Single Server installations can also be expanded to multi-node installation as your workloads grow.
A well-defined Disaster Recovery plan with regular testing will prepare you and your enterprise to act quickly and precisely during a disaster so there is minimal impact to your business. Backgrounders run all types of jobs by default. To reduce the systems vulnerability, you can run multiple gateways and additional instances of some of the server processes. His analytical style revolves around people and context, and in an industry consumed with defaults, he believes that data intelligence starts with giving people access to their information with collaboration in mind. We recommend using a single machine to install your Tableau Server for initial deployments with limited usage and are not mission critical. In addition to the above considerations, you should evaluate the importance of disaster recovery in your organization and plan for a deployment that helps you meet your disaster recovery goals and objectives. Having a few extremely large extracts could put your deployment in this category, as would having many small extracts.
When deploying Tableau Server in the cloud, you can leverage all existing scaling abilities of the Tableau platform including hot topology. It also describes how to architect, configure, and deploy on a variety of hardware to ensure stability and reliability. If there is a problem with the initial node, Tableau Server may not continue to function, even when configured for high availability. Typically 2 vCPUs = 1 physical core for Tableau Server. To see when the last licensing check occurred, look at the log files in the ProgramData\Tableau\Tableau Server\data\tabsvc\logs\licenseservice folder. The development environment does not have to have identical hardware specs to the production and QA environments, unless the development environment is used for upgrade testing or participation in beta programmes. We understand the heightened demands of running a mission critical platform. All Rights Reserved. Start with a two node configuration if you are planning to publish, schedule, and manage flows on your Tableau Server. A properly configured multi-node deployment also uses redundant processes to achieve server high availability. For more information, see indexandsearchserver.vmopts.
While this whitepaper cannot detail all of the possible variations encountered during the planning and implementation of a Tableau deployment, additional resources and information are highlighted after each section for more in-depth reading. Today, self-service analytics and data-driven decision-making are the norm in organizations worldwide.
Brad is a solution architect based out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. 2003-2022 Tableau Software, LLC, Salesforce . Step 5: Maintaining & Monitoring. If you plan to have flows on your Tableau Server, it is recommended that you use two or more nodes and dedicated one of these nodes to run only flows. Tableau Server scales nearly linearly with the addition of hardware resources, according to your unique environment, data, workload and usage mix. Deployments where extracts are frequently refreshed, such as several times a day during business hours, should be isolated on specialized backgrounder nodes. Deploy a new Coordination Service ensemble. All Rights Reserved, High Availability Whitepaper for Tableau 10. To calculate the minimum number of backgrounder processes to run on this node, divide the computers total number of physical cores by 4. Tableau maintains a comprehensive set of IT controls which are regularly audited by independent firms to ensure we are meeting our compliance obligations. If this is a requirement for your organisation, each of the three environments must be licensed separately, as they would be considered three production environments as defined in Tableau's End User Licence Agreement. To isolate the workload of the backgrounder process, add specialized backgrounder nodes, ensuring redundancy, as shown in Nodes 4 and 5 below. 
However, It is recommended that you have a dedicated node for Tableau Prep Conductor. As users are onboarded and start creating and consuming content, you should monitor the hardware and content utilisation to make informed decisions on server sizing using data from hardware monitoring tools and Tableau Servers Repository. Having just a few, extremely large extracts could put your deployment in this category, as would having very many small extracts. Eric is a principal business intelligence consultant for InterWorks. Our licensing model supports redundant server components so youre only paying for production environments. There are several factors that affect disk space requirements, including whether or not you will be publishing extracts, flows, and the number of workbooks to Tableau Server. For more information, see tsmconfiguration set Options. NOTE: In certain circumstances you may want to limit the processes running on your initial node. You also need to make sure the computer you install Tableau Server on has adequate resources to handle the processes and the demands of users and data. Two other processes are initially included on the initial node but can be added or moved to additional nodes, the CFS (Client File Service)and the Coordination Service. For more information, see tsmconfiguration set Options. For more information about licensed processes, see Licensed processes. Taking a snapshot of a Tableau Server machine and restoring on a new machine is not supported. 2003-2022 Tableau Software LLC. The goal is to minimise system downtime by eliminating single points of failure and enabling detection of failures with failover where possible. We use industry-standard security protocols and best practices, keep our users well informed, and quickly respond to security issues on the rare occasion that they arise. The second is detecting when there are failures and triggering reliable failover mechanisms as necessary. Users may favour the QA environment to circumvent stringent policies or delays to get content into production, so work towards a good balance by automating content migration to the production server with the Content Migration Tool found in the Tableau Server Management Add-on or custom workflow scripts using Tableaus REST APIs. Individual processes within Tableau will automatically restart if they degrade, keeping the server at peak performance without requiring manual oversight.
It only takes 15 seconds to fill out. Today, more than ever, self-service analytics and data-driven decision-making are becoming the norm in organizations worldwide. For more information, see tsm topology set-node-role. One instance of Interactive Microservice Container is installed on a node that has Application Server enabled, and one instance of Non-Interactive Microservice Container is installed on a node that has Backgrounder enabled. Index and Search Server memory is added to all three nodes for redundancy and can be configured to improve performance by using the indexandsearchserver.vmopts TSM configuration option. In an extract-heavy environment, most data sources are extracts. Two Node Installation - Specialized for extract heavy environments. On the initial node, install all the processes except for the backgrounder. This means you should make a point of moving the two unique processes to another of your running nodes as soon as possible. In an initial deployment of Tableau, you should estimate 600-800 Explorers per 8-core node, assuming 10% active users (interactive, concurrent requests made to Tableau Server, including consuming dashboards on a laptop or mobile device, web authoring, and connecting to and querying published data sources). This is true even when an installation is configured for high availability. Note: This topic applies to Tableau Server only. Spreading the server processes out over multiple nodes can extend the reliability and efficiency of Tableau Server by providing redundancy and additional computing power.
On the initial node, set the Backgrounder node role to run all job types including flows using the tsm topology set-node-role tsm configuration. Note: For deployments using virtual machines, Tableau recommends dedicated CPU affinity. An HA installation ofTableau Serverhas a minimum of three nodes and multiple redundant instances of key processes (the Repository, file store/Data Engine and coordination service) on different nodes. It also demonstrates how the performance of Tableau Server 10 compares with earlier versions. If cost is a consideration, virtual hardware is also viable. There are two common strategies for achieving HA.
By integrating with AWS to configure an external repository for Tableau Server, you will be able to take advantage of these additional benefits of the cloud. For more information, see Add a Load Balancer.
Thats why Tableau is designed to meet your most stringent SLAs.
By supporting both live and extract data types, a restored Tableau Server is available immediately, even without access to the original data sources. 
This reliance on data requires a high degree of availability and stability of the underlying systems. These are the general steps you follow to create a distributed installation of Tableau Server: Begin by installing Tableau Server on your initial node. Tableau Server can be installed on-premises with physical or virtual machines or in the cloud and supports Windows or Linux operating systems. This will allow administrators to test upgrades and participate in beta programmes in the test environment by restoring back production content. The goal is to minimize system downtime by eliminating single points of failure, and enabling detection of failures with failover where possible. But you can utilise hot topology to responsively adjust Tableau Server process allocation, allowing you to tune the balance of machine costs and capacity needs.
This whitepaper provides a deep dive into Tableaus architecture and how it scales with increasing workloads.
If your initial node fails for reasons that are recoverable in a relatively short amount of time (for example, a hardware failure you can correct), you should first attempt to bring the node back up without using the procedure below. To build in redundancy for HA related items such as repository, file redundancy, and failover, you need a minimum of three nodes.
The most basic way to run Tableau Server is to install a single node.
For more information, see Minimum hardware requirements for installation. For information about moving the License service and TSM Controller from the initial node to another node, see Recover from an initial node failure below. 2003-2022 Tableau Software, LLC, a Salesforce Company. Choose just the right amount of redundancy to fulfill your business SLAs and sleep well at night knowing you have the most reliable enterprise analytics platform on the market. As you monitor and gather data about the performance and usage, you can fine tune and configure the number of instances for these processes. For example, on the node where it is dedicated to running backgrounder, initially, you can set the number of backgrounders to minimum (total number of cores divided by four), and increase the number of backgrounder processes later if you find that: Extract refreshes are taking a long time to complete, Subscriptions and alerts are not completing on time. Generate a node configuration (bootstrap) file on the initial node. When you install the backgrounder, Tableau Server automatically installs one instance of the Data Engine. The diagram below illustrates how to plan for a range of RTO requirements: These baseline configurations may not be enough as your needs change and grow, and you might need to scale your Tableau Server beyond these configurations. There is less redundancy and fewer safeguards in the event of a problem with one of the server processes. All server processes are running on a single machine. For details on how to deploy a Coordination Service ensemble on your cluster, see Deploy a Coordination Service Ensemble . Eric is also a contributing author to Tableau Your Data! This is only a starting point and should not be considered a hard sizing rule beyond the initial deployment. For Tableau Server the RPO cannot be shorter than the time it takes to complete a full backup of your server. This topic describes three baseline architectures that can be used as starting points for your Tableau Server installations. Adding an external load balancer to make sure your installation is robust to Gateway failures and make sure that requests only get routed to functioning Gateway processes. The subset of Tableau Server that require a valid Tableau Server license are considered "licensed processes.". Index and Search Server across all the three nodes. Three processes run only on the initial node and cannot be moved to any other node except in a failure situation, the License Service (License Manager), Activation Service, and TSM Controller (Administration Controller). For more information, see Mission-critical reliability for high-availablity and disaster-recovery concepts and white papers. For more information on performance tuning, see Performance Tuning topic. In general, the considerations and recommendations described in this topic apply to virtual environment and cloud deployments. HA in Tableau Server is mainly achieved by: File redundancy with multiple File Store/Data Engine instances. The successful functioning of Tableau Server depends on a properly functioning Coordination Service. Highly available (HA) installationAn HA installation of Tableau Server is a special type of multi-node installation with a minimum of three nodes and multiple instances of key processes (the Repository, File Store/Data Engine (Hyper), Coordination Service, and Client File Service) on different computers. Single Server installations can also be expanded to multi-node installation as your workloads grow.
A well-defined Disaster Recovery plan with regular testing will prepare you and your enterprise to act quickly and precisely during a disaster so there is minimal impact to your business. Backgrounders run all types of jobs by default. To reduce the systems vulnerability, you can run multiple gateways and additional instances of some of the server processes. His analytical style revolves around people and context, and in an industry consumed with defaults, he believes that data intelligence starts with giving people access to their information with collaboration in mind. We recommend using a single machine to install your Tableau Server for initial deployments with limited usage and are not mission critical. In addition to the above considerations, you should evaluate the importance of disaster recovery in your organization and plan for a deployment that helps you meet your disaster recovery goals and objectives. Having a few extremely large extracts could put your deployment in this category, as would having many small extracts.
When deploying Tableau Server in the cloud, you can leverage all existing scaling abilities of the Tableau platform including hot topology. It also describes how to architect, configure, and deploy on a variety of hardware to ensure stability and reliability. If there is a problem with the initial node, Tableau Server may not continue to function, even when configured for high availability. Typically 2 vCPUs = 1 physical core for Tableau Server. To see when the last licensing check occurred, look at the log files in the ProgramData\Tableau\Tableau Server\data\tabsvc\logs\licenseservice folder. The development environment does not have to have identical hardware specs to the production and QA environments, unless the development environment is used for upgrade testing or participation in beta programmes. We understand the heightened demands of running a mission critical platform. All Rights Reserved. Start with a two node configuration if you are planning to publish, schedule, and manage flows on your Tableau Server. A properly configured multi-node deployment also uses redundant processes to achieve server high availability. For more information, see indexandsearchserver.vmopts. While this whitepaper cannot detail all of the possible variations encountered during the planning and implementation of a Tableau deployment, additional resources and information are highlighted after each section for more in-depth reading. Today, self-service analytics and data-driven decision-making are the norm in organizations worldwide.
Brad is a solution architect based out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. 2003-2022 Tableau Software, LLC, Salesforce . Step 5: Maintaining & Monitoring. If you plan to have flows on your Tableau Server, it is recommended that you use two or more nodes and dedicated one of these nodes to run only flows. Tableau Server scales nearly linearly with the addition of hardware resources, according to your unique environment, data, workload and usage mix. Deployments where extracts are frequently refreshed, such as several times a day during business hours, should be isolated on specialized backgrounder nodes. Deploy a new Coordination Service ensemble. All Rights Reserved, High Availability Whitepaper for Tableau 10. To calculate the minimum number of backgrounder processes to run on this node, divide the computers total number of physical cores by 4. Tableau maintains a comprehensive set of IT controls which are regularly audited by independent firms to ensure we are meeting our compliance obligations. If this is a requirement for your organisation, each of the three environments must be licensed separately, as they would be considered three production environments as defined in Tableau's End User Licence Agreement. To isolate the workload of the backgrounder process, add specialized backgrounder nodes, ensuring redundancy, as shown in Nodes 4 and 5 below. However, It is recommended that you have a dedicated node for Tableau Prep Conductor. As users are onboarded and start creating and consuming content, you should monitor the hardware and content utilisation to make informed decisions on server sizing using data from hardware monitoring tools and Tableau Servers Repository. Having just a few, extremely large extracts could put your deployment in this category, as would having very many small extracts. Eric is a principal business intelligence consultant for InterWorks. Our licensing model supports redundant server components so youre only paying for production environments. There are several factors that affect disk space requirements, including whether or not you will be publishing extracts, flows, and the number of workbooks to Tableau Server. For more information, see tsmconfiguration set Options. NOTE: In certain circumstances you may want to limit the processes running on your initial node. You also need to make sure the computer you install Tableau Server on has adequate resources to handle the processes and the demands of users and data. Two other processes are initially included on the initial node but can be added or moved to additional nodes, the CFS (Client File Service)and the Coordination Service. For more information, see tsmconfiguration set Options. For more information about licensed processes, see Licensed processes. Taking a snapshot of a Tableau Server machine and restoring on a new machine is not supported. 2003-2022 Tableau Software LLC. The goal is to minimise system downtime by eliminating single points of failure and enabling detection of failures with failover where possible. We use industry-standard security protocols and best practices, keep our users well informed, and quickly respond to security issues on the rare occasion that they arise. The second is detecting when there are failures and triggering reliable failover mechanisms as necessary. Users may favour the QA environment to circumvent stringent policies or delays to get content into production, so work towards a good balance by automating content migration to the production server with the Content Migration Tool found in the Tableau Server Management Add-on or custom workflow scripts using Tableaus REST APIs. Individual processes within Tableau will automatically restart if they degrade, keeping the server at peak performance without requiring manual oversight. It only takes 15 seconds to fill out. Today, more than ever, self-service analytics and data-driven decision-making are becoming the norm in organizations worldwide. For more information, see tsm topology set-node-role. One instance of Interactive Microservice Container is installed on a node that has Application Server enabled, and one instance of Non-Interactive Microservice Container is installed on a node that has Backgrounder enabled. Index and Search Server memory is added to all three nodes for redundancy and can be configured to improve performance by using the indexandsearchserver.vmopts TSM configuration option. In an extract-heavy environment, most data sources are extracts. Two Node Installation - Specialized for extract heavy environments. On the initial node, install all the processes except for the backgrounder. This means you should make a point of moving the two unique processes to another of your running nodes as soon as possible. In an initial deployment of Tableau, you should estimate 600-800 Explorers per 8-core node, assuming 10% active users (interactive, concurrent requests made to Tableau Server, including consuming dashboards on a laptop or mobile device, web authoring, and connecting to and querying published data sources). This is true even when an installation is configured for high availability. Note: This topic applies to Tableau Server only. Spreading the server processes out over multiple nodes can extend the reliability and efficiency of Tableau Server by providing redundancy and additional computing power.
On the initial node, set the Backgrounder node role to run all job types including flows using the tsm topology set-node-role tsm configuration. Note: For deployments using virtual machines, Tableau recommends dedicated CPU affinity. An HA installation ofTableau Serverhas a minimum of three nodes and multiple redundant instances of key processes (the Repository, file store/Data Engine and coordination service) on different nodes. It also demonstrates how the performance of Tableau Server 10 compares with earlier versions. If cost is a consideration, virtual hardware is also viable. There are two common strategies for achieving HA. By integrating with AWS to configure an external repository for Tableau Server, you will be able to take advantage of these additional benefits of the cloud. For more information, see Add a Load Balancer.
Thats why Tableau is designed to meet your most stringent SLAs.
By supporting both live and extract data types, a restored Tableau Server is available immediately, even without access to the original data sources. This reliance on data requires a high degree of availability and stability of the underlying systems. These are the general steps you follow to create a distributed installation of Tableau Server: Begin by installing Tableau Server on your initial node. Tableau Server can be installed on-premises with physical or virtual machines or in the cloud and supports Windows or Linux operating systems. This will allow administrators to test upgrades and participate in beta programmes in the test environment by restoring back production content. The goal is to minimize system downtime by eliminating single points of failure, and enabling detection of failures with failover where possible. But you can utilise hot topology to responsively adjust Tableau Server process allocation, allowing you to tune the balance of machine costs and capacity needs. This whitepaper provides a deep dive into Tableaus architecture and how it scales with increasing workloads.
If your initial node fails for reasons that are recoverable in a relatively short amount of time (for example, a hardware failure you can correct), you should first attempt to bring the node back up without using the procedure below. To build in redundancy for HA related items such as repository, file redundancy, and failover, you need a minimum of three nodes.