Category: Tableau Servers

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Installation of Tableau Server Ubuntu On Promise 2018.2

Hi Everyone,

On my last post, I mentioned to Easy DWH and Easy Dashboarding that post is related with my last post.

Lets Start;

Create a folder and store downloaded file in that path.

mkdir tableauinst

wget https://www.tableau.com/downloads/server/deb

Step 1: Install Tableau Server package and start Tableau Services Manager

Install Tableau Server with your distribution’s package manager, then run a script to initialize Tableau Services Manager (TSM). Tableau Services Manager is the management toolset used to install, configure, and manage Tableau services.

The initialize script is included with the installed package.

1 – Log on as a user with sudo access to the computer where you want to install Tableau Server.

2 – Navigate to the directory where you copied the Tableau Server installation package.

3 – Use the package manager to install the Tableau Server package.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install gdebi-core
sudo gdebi -n tableau-server-<version>_amd64.deb

4 – Run the following script to start TSM:

sudo ./initialize-tsm –accepteula

5 – After initialization is complete, close the terminal session:
logout

6 – Navigate to the scripts directory:

cd /opt/tableau/tableau_server/packages/scripts.<version>

7 – If your organization uses a forward proxy solution to access the internet, then configure Tableau Server to use the proxy server. Tableau Server must access the internet for map data and for default licensing functionality.

Step 2: Activate and register Tableau Server

Before you can configure Tableau Server you must activate a license and register.

Beginning by logging on to the TSM web UI. See Sign in to Tableau Services Manager Web UI.

Step 3: Configure general server settings

The most important configuration on this Setup page is the identity store option.

I did Local Auth, so you can specify others, check on Tableau website.

Step 4: Create the Tableau Server administrator account

Create the Tableau Server administrator account.

  • If you are using LDAP for authentication, then the account that you specify here must be a user in the directory.

    Run the following command:

    tabcmd initialuser --server 'localhost:80' –username '<AD-user-name>'

  • On the other hand, if you are running Tableau Server with local authentication, the username and password that you specify here will be used to create the administrative account. Enter a strong password for this account.

    Run the following command:

    tabcmd initialuser --server 'localhost:80' --username 'admin'

Use this account to access the Tableau Server admin web pages.

Step 5: Configure local firewall (optional)

We recommend that you run a local firewall on the computer that is running Tableau Server. This is a security best practice. By default, Linux distributions do not enable firewall during standard installations.

If you have installed or enabled a local firewall then you must open two ports for Tableau Server. These ports are the gateway port (TCP 80) and the tabadmincontroller port (TCP 8850). The following procedure shows an example of how to open these ports using Firewalld, which is the default firewall on CentOS. If you are using a different firewall then you’ll need to determine the right commands to run to open these ports.

  1. Start firewalld:

    sudo systemctl start firewalld

  2. Set default zone to public. Run the following command:

    sudo firewall-cmd --set-default-zone=public

  3. Add ports for the gateway port and the tabadmincontroller port. Run the following commands:

    sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=80/tcp

    sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=8850/tcp

  4. Reload the firewall and verify the settings. Run the following commands:

    sudo firewall-cmd --reload

    sudo firewall-cmd --list-all

    Bingo, Tableau is working now, just a sample from tableau dashboard 🙂

Tableau-Server Version Upgrade on Ubuntu

Tableau Server Pre-Upgrade

Create an image of Instance of the server, backup_tableau-1_24082018

Connect to tableau servers with ssh and login TSM on the command line.

tsm login -u XXXXX (which is your admin tsm user)

Perform a Full Backup and Restore of Tableau Server
There are two types of backup data that Tableau Server can generate. We recommend performing regular backups of each type in case you must restore a server in a recovery scenario:

1 – Repository data: Tableau Server data consists of the Tableau PostgreSQL database or repository, which contains workbook and user metadata, data extract files, and site configuration data. When you use TSM to create a backup, all of this data is saved in a single file with a .tsbak extension.

tsm maintenance backup -f tableau_server<version>.tsbak -d

2 – Configuration and Topology data: includes most of the server configuration information required to fully recover a server. SMTP, alerting, authentication, are all examples of configuration data that are exportable for backup. Topology data defines how your Tableau Server processes are configured in both single-server and multiple node deployments.

tsm settings export -f configuration.json

Start to Upgrade

1 – Log on as a user with sudo access to the computer you are upgrading.

Download which version you want to get on Tableau Web site:

1.a) wget https://downloads.tableau.com/esdalt/2018.2.0/tableau-server-2018-2-0_amd64.deb

2 – Use the package manager to install the Tableau Server package

2.a) sudo gdebi -n tableau-server-2018-2-0_amd64.deb

3 – After you have installed the new package on every node in your cluster

3.a) tsm stop

4 – With Tableau Server stopped, run the following command on any one node.

4.a) sudo /opt/tableau/tableau_server/packages/scripts.20182.18.0627.2230/upgrade-tsm –accepteula -u XXXXX (which is your admin tsm user)

5 – The upgraded Tableau binary directory will be added to PATH for new shells. To get the updated path, either start a new session, or for bash users run:

5.a) source /etc/profile.d/tableau_server.sh

6 – Start Tableau Server:

6.a) tsm start -u XXXXX (which is your admin tsm user)

Confirm that everything works as expected, these are some areas of testing to consider:

Server processes:
Sign in to Tableau Server as a server administrator, and then open the Server Status page to confirm that all services and processes are running as expected (including on all additional nodes if this is a distributed installation).

User access:
Confirm that Tableau Server users can sign in. Test your normal user sign in process. Have some of your users participate in the testing to make sure they are able to sign in as expected, and that they can get to the same content that they have access to in your production environment.

Publishing workbooks and data sources:
Have users publish workbooks and data sources from Tableau Desktop to make sure this goes as you expect.

Viewing published workbooks:
Have users who are familiar with the content try to view published workbooks to make sure they appear as expected. Test views embedded in web pages (for example, in SharePoint pages).

Subscriptions and extract refreshes :
Manually run some extract refreshes to confirm that they complete successfully. Run some key scheduled extract refreshes to confirm that they complete as expected.

Permissions:
Confirm that permissions are still set as expected for users and content.

Command-line utilities and APIs. If applicable, test the command line utilities (tsm and tabcmd) and programmatic access via APIs.

tsm status -v if something going wrong try to figure out tsm restart command.

If tsm is not started try to check logs with below command;
The upgrade log, app-upgrade.log, is located in /var/opt/tableau/tableau_server/logs