In all our previous blogs, we have stressed about the importance of Tableau and its various forms. Today, we will throw some light into how having a high-performing Tableau Server is crucial for fast and efficient analytics.
Tableau Server is a web-based collaboration platform and it allows users to connect, share, view and interact with various data sources from different devices. It makes it accessible to Tableau users within the local protected network, data visualizations access to be extended to desktop, mobile, and authenticated web users outside your organization. Scaling on premise Tableau Server optimally can improve the experience for users and enable them to handle larger workloads. It also allows to share your data and dashboards to multiply your impact. Whether you keep your server deployment on premise or deploy to the public cloud, you can keep the management of your server in your hands.
Tableau Server integrates with the following user authentication solutions: Active Directory, SAML, OpenId, and Kerberos. (Ref: https://help.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/admin.htm#:~:text=Tableau%20Server%20is%20also%20a,within%20your%20local%20protected%20network.)
1. Understand organisations workload
Understanding organisations workload is very important as different organizations use Tableau Server differently. Some use it for ad-hoc querying while others use it for scheduled report generation.
But there are a few important questions like ‘How many users will interact with the server at once? Are users generating heavy reports, or are they mainly viewing dashboards? Where is the data coming from (databases, Excel, cloud sources), and how large it is?’ to which organisations need to have answers. These questions will help understand the occurrence, type of workload and data sources.
2. Optimize Hardware Resources
Tableau Server’s performance is dependent on CPU, memory and disk input and output. Tableau’s processes require multi-core processors (8 cores or more) for medium to large deployments. When it comes to memory, insufficient memory leads to slow processing. For best performance, one can start with a minimum of 32 GB RAM, increasing it as needed and for large workloads, it is better to have 64 GB or more. Solid-state drives (SSDs) are best for high-performance as this speed of disks impacts how fast data is read from and written to Tableau’s internal stores.
3. Leverage Tableau Server Clustering
In a multi node set-up, different Tableau server processes can be distributed across various machines, improving redundancy, fault tolerance and workload distribution.
This will help in scaling beyond a single machine. Two different types of nodes can be added:
– Primary node; it will handle Tableau administrative solutions.
– Worker node; this will handle and distribute single machine and user requests.
It provides users with horizontal scaling. It helps organisations when they have hundreds of users or large extract refresh workloads.
4. Optimize Tableau Configuration Settings
Tableau’s configuration options can be adjusted to improve server performance. For example, one can adjust VizQL session timeout, cache settings and backgrounder processes. For example, by reducing the VizQL session time out, it ensures unused sessions are closed quickly. It will free up the system resources. Tableau cache settings can improve performance by reducing the need to regenerate views as it allows caching of data extracts and query results. Backgrounder processes handle extract refreshes and scheduled tasks. If one’s server handles many large extracts, one must add more backgrounders to make the process smooth.
5. Monitor Performance and Usage
Regularly monitoring Tableau Server will ensure that it is performing to its best based on the workload scales. There is a Tableau Server Resource Monitoring Tool by Tableau and TabMon for tracking key performance indicators like CPU, memory usage, disk Input and Output and session times. Analysing these metrics will help in adjusting the configurations and scale it if need be, to avoid likely performance issues.
6. Maintain Best Practices for Dashboard Design
Tableau dashboards, which are designed efficiently, will help in increased Tableau Server performance. Some of the best practices while designing Tableau dashboards are limiting the use of complex calculations and filters, reducing the number of data points in display, reducing live connections and using extracts to reduce query load on the server.
Scaling an on premise Tableau Server is a strategic process that requires understanding workload, optimizing hardware, leveraging Tableau clustering, fine-tuning configuration settings and monitoring performance. When all these are in right place, it leads to better performance, improved user satisfaction, and provides increased ability to handle larger data workloads seamlessly.
By focusing on these optimization techniques, organizations can ensure that their Tableau Server scales efficiently along with their growing data and user base. As one of Tableau’s longest standing Gold Partners with vast experience in Visual Analytics best practices, CRG Solutions can help provide you with solutions that enables you to make better informed decisions.
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