Tableau Server on Windows Help

When available disk space on a Tableau Server node is low, performance can be degraded. If free space falls too low, Tableau Server may begin to perform erratically.

To monitor free disk space, configure Tableau Server to save disk usage information (this is on by default) and, if desired, enable email notifications about low disk space. For more information, see Configure Server Event Notification.

Note: Disk space monitoring measures free disk space on each server node. Available space may be impacted by programs or processes that are not a part of Tableau Server.

If you find that your Tableau Server installation is running into free disk space limitations, you should take steps to make more space available. This topic suggests some ways you can do that. You can also find useful information in the Tableau Knowledge Base: After Running Out of Hard Disk Space, a Few Processes Are Not Able to Start(Link opens in a new window).

Viewing Disk Usage on Tableau Server Nodes

When disk space usage monitoring is enabled (this is the default), server administrators can use the Server Disk Space administrative view to see current disk space usage, and one month of usage data on your Tableau Server nodes. Use this view to help you determine whether one of your server nodes is experiencing a jump in space usage, or if space usage has increased over time.

Cleaning Up Tableau Server-Related Files

To minimise server space used by Tableau Server, you can clean up unnecessary files.

Use the tsm maintenance cleanup command to remove log files, temporary files, and unneeded entries in the PostgreSQL database. If you want to save the logs before you clean them up, you can make an archive. For more information, see Remove Unneeded Files.

Once you have cleaned up log files and temporary files, you may want to use the administrative views to determine which workbooks and data sources are taking up the most space on your server, and whether any of these is not being used. For more information, see Administrative Views .

Reducing Coordination Service logs

The Coordination Service can generate large numbers of transaction logs during normal functioning. By default the Coordination Service will gather these up, creating a snapshot for every 100,000 transaction logs, and deleting snapshots older than five days. If fewer than 100,000 transaction logs exist, no snapshot is created, and the logs are left in place until the transaction log threshold is reached. As a result, disk space can run low as logs accumulate. By default the logs and snapshots are saved in the Tableau Server data directory: C:\ProgramData\Tableau\Tableau Server\data\tabsvc\appzookeeper\<n>\version-2.

If you experience a shortage of disk space due to old transaction logs, your Tableau Server installation may be generating fewer than 100,000 logs daily. You can adjust the number of logs required to trigger the creation of a snapshot using the zookeeper.config.snapCount option:

tsm configuration set -k zookeeper.config.snapCount -v <transaction_log_count>

tsm pending-changes apply

For more information, see zookeeper.config.snapCount.

Unable to access Tableau Server or TSM Web UI after running out of disk space

To avoid running out of disk space, consider configuring low disk space notifications to let you know when space reaches a pre-determined size. For more information, see Configure Server Event Notification.

If you do run out of disk space, you may have problems accessing Tableau Server or TSM using the web UI. To fix this problem, delete extraneous files to free up disk space then force a server reconfigure by setting a non-existent key.

1. On the initial node, open a command prompt as administrator.

2. Set a non-existent configuration key:

   tsm configuration set -k foo -v bar --force-keys

3. Apply the changes to force the reconfiguration:

   tsm pending-changes apply

Setting a key that does not exist will have no impact on Tableau.