Tableau Server on Windows Help

Your Tableau Server may be configured with a locally running File Store or an External File Store. This topic describes the steps needed to reconfigure your existing Tableau Server:

• Reconfigure your Tableau Server to use External File Store. This will move your File Store to a network share.

• Reconfigure your Tableau Server to run File Store locally. This will move your File Store from the external storage to your Tableau Server.

• Configure your Tableau Server to use a different storage. An example of this might be when your current network share is at the end of life and you need to use a new network share with new hardware.

Reconfigure Tableau Server with External File Store

Prerequisites

• Tableau Server should be version 2020.1 or later.

• You must have a network share to use as the external storage.

  Use SMB shares for Windows installations.

  Storage and network considerations: See Performance Considerations for External File Store.

  Estimating the storage size: You must take into account the amount of storage needed for publishing and refreshing extracts. In addition, you must also take into account the repository backup size unless you specifically choose the option to do your repository backup separately as described in the Option 2: Back up repository separately topic.

  • Extracts:
    • Consider the number of extracts that will be published to Tableau Server and the size of each extract. Test your needs by publishing several extracts to Tableau Server and then checking the disk space used. You can use this amount of disk space to help you figure out how many extracts will be published to Tableau Server over time as well as how each existing extract will increase in size.

    • Consider the space needed by the temp directory during an extract refresh. The temp directory, which is where an extract is stored to during a refresh, may require up to three times the final file size of the extract.

  • Repository Backup:

    • To obtain an estimate of the repository data, check the size of <data directory>/pgsql/data/base directory.

    • To obtain the exact size of the repository data, open the backup file and use the size of the workgroup.pg_dump file.
• Tableau Server should have a valid and activated Advanced Management licence.

Step 1: Upgrade Tableau Server

Upgrade your Tableau Server to 2020.1 or later: Upgrading from 2018.2 and Later (Windows) . If your Tableau Server is already on version 2020.1 or later, you can skip this step.

Step 2: Activate the Advanced Management licence

1. View Server Licences to make sure you have a Advanced Management licence activated on your Tableau Server.

2. If you don't have a Advanced Managementon your Tableau Server, use the following tsm command to activate the licence. Provide the Advanced Management key as your product key:

   tsm licenses activate -k <product key>

Step 3: Configure File Store to use an external storage

After completing the upgrade and verifying the licences, configure Tableau Server with External File Store. This will move any existing data from your local File Store to the external storage of your choice.

1. Configure a network share. On the File Server:
   • Create and share a directory to host the files
   • On all the Tableau Server nodes, map the network share or use a UNC path.

2. Create a tableau directory in your network share and give full access to Network Service account. We recommend calling the directory tableau.

   Note:
   - The Network Service account can be used to access resources on remote computers within the same Active Directory domain, but we recommend that you configure a domain account for Run As service account to use in this scenario. For more information, see Run As Service Account.
   - Services that run as the Network Service account access network resources by using the credentials of the computer account in the format <domain_name>\<computer_name>$.
   If you are using Active Directory to manage permissions and access to users, here is a recommended way to manage the permissions to your network share:
   - Create an Active Directory security group.
   - Add the computer accounts for the Tableau cluster along with the Run-As user to this group.
   - Grant access to the security group on the network share. This way if you need to add or remove a computer from the cluster, you can just make the change to the security group.
   
   

3. Enable the network share feature using the following tsm commands:

   tsm topology external-services storage enable --network-share \\hostname\<network share>\tableau\
   

   The setup program automatically creates the following directory structure and will move the data from the local File Store to the external storage. The local File Stores will be automatically decommissioned during this process.

   Extracts and workbook revisions:

   tableau_data tabsvc/dataengine/extracts

   tableau_data/tabsvc/dataengine/revisions

   PostgreSQL data backups:

   tableau_data/tabsvc/pg_backups

   Note: This directory will be created the first time you create a backup.

Reconfigure Tableau Server to use local File Store

1. Stop Tableau Server by running the following command:

   tsm stop

2. Run the following command to move the File Store data from the external storage to Tableau Server:

   tsm topology external-services storage disable –fsn <node1, node2>

3. Start Tableau Server by running the following command:

   tsm start

For a Tableau Server cluster, specify the nodes where File Store should be installed. The data is copied to the first node specified in the command and then replicated to the other nodes.

Note: When moving File Store from external to local, make sure Data Engine process is not installed by itself on a separate node and is installed along with one of the core services which include File Store, Application Server (VizPortal), VizQL Server, Data Server and Backgrounder.

Typically, when you install Tableau Server Data Engine installation happens automatically and is installed on the nodes that have one or more of the core services. However, when you configure Tableau Server to use external storage, you will have the ability to manually install Data Engine on a node on its own without co-locating with the core processes.

If you currently have a Data Engine process installed on a separate node, you can either choose to install File Store on that node or remove Data Engine from that node, before running the disable command. If you install File Store on a node that currently does not have Data Engine installed, Data Engine will be added automatically.

If you have a Data Engine only node when you run the disable command, it will result in an error.

Configure Tableau Server to use a different external storage

1. Configure the new network share. On the File Server:

   1. Create and share a directory to host the files.

   2. On all the Tableau Server nodes, map the network share or use a UNC path.

2. Create a tableau directory in your network share and give full access to Network Service account. We recommend calling the directory tableau.

3. Stop Tableau Server by running the following command:

   tsm stop

4. Run the following command to configure Tableau Server to use the new network share:

   tsm topology external-services storage switch-share --network-share \\<newshare>\tableau
                   

5. Start Tableau Server by running the following command:

   tsm start

Who can do this

Tableau Server Administrators can move File Store locations. In addition, you will need access to the external storage that is used for the External File Store.