Running Tableu On Prem

Use Cases
1

We are trying to figure out an on-prem solution for Tableau.

Limitations:

  • Tableau Server in a Container only supports license activation using
    Server ATR, which requires the container to have internet access.
    Therefore, offline activation in an air-gapped environment is not possible.
  • Tableau Server in a Container does not currently support the Resource
    Monitoring Tool (RMT) agent.
  • Kerberos is not supported in Tableau Server in a Container.

To test out the Tableau Server in a Container Image quickly in a
proof-of-concept scenarios, see Tableau Server in a Container - Quick Start
.

Other details in the source:

Our aim is to connect Tableu to our central server, do you have any guidance or help on this? Have others done this before ?

2

When we last looked into it, Tableau did not seem compatible with Docker or our security model. However, there have been changes made since then on Tableau’s end. Based on the Tableau Server in a Container documentation it looks like the container no longer requires CAP_SYS_ADMIN capabilities which prevented it from running on Aptible in the past. In the past, the CAP_SYS_ADMIN issue made it so that Tableau could absolutely not be run on Aptible but their change has made it so it is now possible.

Please note that Aptible does not have any direct or secondhand experience with running Tableau in Aptible. We will be happy to answer your questions as you go through the set up but we do not have any guidance or expertise that we can share on this matter. If you run into issues, we might be able to tell you whether it is a platform issue or not, or potentially provide you an approach to start solving the error but we don’t have examples or prior experience to share exact fixes or recommendations. From a very brief skim through of the Tableau documentation, our CREs were able to identify two potential issues to be wary of:

  1. Tableau doesn’t handle logs in a way that’s compatible with Docker, and even less compatible with Aptible. We expect this will make troubleshooting issues/errors painful. One potential solution here is for you to create a custom log handler to expose the tableau logs as Aptible expects to receive them.
  2. Tableau requires data to be stored on the disk. Aptible does not provide persistent storage to Application containers, but it looks like Tableau may be able to address this with their External File Store feature, though it’s gated behind an additional license.

Again, these are only two points that stood out to us. There might be more issues that come with this process that we did not forsee. To answer your original question, it is technically possible to run Tableau on Aptible. The Support team however cannot provide expertise or guidance on running Tableau in Aptible at this time.