Self-Deploy Tableau Server on the Google Cloud Platform in a Distributed Environment


This is archived content

Deployments on public clouds continue to be supported but the content for third-party public cloud deployments is no longer updated.

For the latest Tableau Server deployment content, see the Enterprise Deployment Guide(Link opens in a new window) and the Deploy(Link opens in a new window) section of Tableau Server help.

For those customers who have access, we recommend Tableau Cloud. For more details, see:

Introduction

You can run Tableau Server on two virtual machines (VMs) in a distributed environment, also known as a cluster. However, if you want to run Tableau Server in a highly available (HA) distributed environment, you need to launch three or more Google Compute Engine (GCE) virtual machines (VMs) of the same type and capacity and configure them as additional nodes. This scenario assumes that you have three Google Compute Engine VMs with Tableau Server installed on each instance. One instance is configured as the initial node, and the other two instances are configured as additional nodes.

Use the following steps to install and deploy Tableau Server on a cluster of three Google Compute Engine VMs in a highly available and scalable configuration.

Step 1: Create a Google Cloud Platform Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

You must have an existing Google Cloud Platform custom mode Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with a private and a public subnet across three different zones. For information about how to plan and create a custom mode VPC network with custom subnets, see Using VPC Networks(Link opens in a new window) at the Google website.

Step 1: Create a Google Cloud Platform HIPAA-aligned project

Referring to the Setting up a HIPAA-aligned Google Cloud project(Link opens in a new window) tutorial, and relying on the Cloud Healthcare Data Protection Toolkit, this architecture helps you build a Google Cloud-based infrastructure with few steps by treating the configuration as code. The following diagram illustrates how the architecture helps you meet security and compliance best practices by using reusable building blocks: a Google Cloud Cloud Deployment Manager configuration script and parameterized configuration templates.

Step 2: Deploy Three Google Compute Engine VMs

Deploy three Google Compute Engine virtual machines (VMs) of the same type and capacity, in the private subnet, with each VM in its own zone. Select VMs that meet the system requirements for Tableau Server. You’ll install Tableau Server on each of the Google Compute Engine VMs, and use one node as the initial server and the two other nodes as additional servers.

For more information about installing Tableau Server in a distributed Windows environment, see Distributed and High Availability Tableau Server Installations and Install and Configure Additional Nodes.

Step 3: Create a Google Cloud Platform Load Balancer for the Tableau Server Cluster

Read Setting up a load balancer(Link opens in a new window) at the Google website, and follow the steps to launch a load balancer within your Google Cloud Platform Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

  1. Create and launch either an Internet-facing load balancer or an internally accessible load balancer:

  2. Ensure that your VPC network firewall rules are configured to allow access on port 80 or 443 only, with the source limited to hosts or ranges of hosts that will access Tableau Server. For more information about firewall rules, see Firewall Rules Overview(Link opens in a new window) at the Google website.

  3. Specify the ping path as /.

  4. Select the Tableau Server instances and follow the instructions in Creating Cross-Region Load Balancing(Link opens in a new window) at the Google website, so that the load balancer can balance the traffic across the instances in multiple zones.

  5. Update Tableau Server to use the load balancer. For more information, see Add a Load Balancer in the Tableau Server Help.

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