Selecting a Google Compute Engine Virtual Machine Type and Size


The Google Cloud Platform offers many types of Google Compute Engine (GCE) virtual machines (VMs) in various sizes. Choosing the right VM for your workload is an important factor for a successful Tableau Server deployment. You can choose from a wide range of VMs. For a complete list of all available VM types and sizes, see the Machine Types(Link opens in a new window) page at the Google website.

It is important to select a VM that can run Tableau Server. The VM must meet the Tableau Server hardware guidelines (a minimum of 8 cores and 128 GB of RAM).

At minimum, a 64-bit Tableau Server requires a 4-core CPU (the equivalent of 8 Google Compute Engine vCPUs) and 64 GB RAM. However, a total of 8 CPU cores (16 Google Compute Engine vCPUs) and 128 GB RAM are strongly recommended for a single production Google Compute Engine VM.

Typical VM types and sizes for development, test and production environments

  • n2-standard-16
Component/ResourceGoogle Cloud Platform

CPU

16+ vCPU

Operating System

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

    • Tableau Server 2021.4.0 and later: 7.3.x and higher, 8.3 and higher (not 9.x)

    • Tableau Server 2021.3.x and earlier: 7.3 and higher (not 8.x)

  • Amazon Linux 2

    • Tableau Server 2021.4.0 and later

  • CentOS 7.3 and higher (not 8.x)

  • Oracle Linux 7.3 and higher (not 8.x)

  • Ubuntu

    • Tableau Server 2023.1.0 and later: The latest versions of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS (not 17.04), and 20.04 LTS

    • Tableau Server 2022.1.12 and later, 2022.3.4 and later: The latest versions of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS (not 17.04), and 20.04 LTS

      Note: Support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS was added for versions 2022.1 and 2022.3 in the February 2023 maintenance releases.

    • Tableau Server 2022.3.3, 2022.1.12, and earlier: The latest versions of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS (not 17.04)

Note: As of July 2022, Debian distributions are no longer supported. For more information, see this Tableau Community post(Link opens in a new window).

    Earlier versions:

Memory

128+ GB RAM (4 GB RAM per vCPU)

Storage

Two volumes:

30-50 GiB volume for the operating system

100 GiB or larger volume for Tableau Server

Storage type

SSD persistent disk, 200GB++

For more information about SSD persistent disks, see Storage Options at the Google Cloud Platform website.

Disk latency

Less than or equal to 20ms as measured by the iostat command in Linux.

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