Add a Load Balancer


You can enhance the reliability of Tableau Server by running gateways on multiple nodes, and configuring a load balancer to distribute requests across the gateways. Unlike the repository process, which can be active or passive, all gateway processes are active. If one gateway in a cluster becomes unavailable, the load balancer stops sending requests to it. The load balancer algorithm you choose determines how the gateways will route client requests.

  • Kerberos: If you will be using Kerberos authentication, you need to configure Tableau Server for your load balancer before you configure Tableau Server for Kerberos. For more information, see Configure Kerberos.

  • Tested load balancers: Tableau Server clusters with multiple gateways have been tested with Apache and F5 load balancers.

    If you are using an Apache load balancer and creating custom administrative views, you need to connect directly to the Tableau Server repository. You cannot connect through the load balancer.

  • Tableau Server URL: When a load balancer is in front of a Tableau Server cluster, the URL that's accessed by Tableau Server users belongs to the load balancer, not the initial Tableau Server node.

  • Single load balancer endpoint: You must configure your load balancers for a single URL endpoint. You cannot configure different endpoint hosts to redirect to the same Tableau Server deployment. The single external URL is defined in gateway.public.host when you configure Tableau Server, as described in Configuring Proxies and Load Balancers for Tableau Server.

  • Trusted host settings: The computer running the load balancer must be identified to Tableau Server as a trusted host, as described in Configuring Proxies and Load Balancers for Tableau Server.

Configure Tableau Server to work with a load balancer

The settings used to identify a load balancer to Tableau Server are the same ones that are used to identify a reverse proxy server. If your Tableau Server cluster requires both a proxy server and a load balancer, both must use a single external URL defined in gateway.public.host and all proxy servers and load balancers must be specified in gateway.trusted and gateway.trusted_hosts. See Configuring Proxies and Load Balancers for Tableau Server.

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