Before installing components in your server, read the installation guidelines.
Before installing optional devices, read the following notices carefully:
Attention: Prevent exposure to static electricity, which might lead to system halt and loss of data, by keeping static-sensitive components in their static-protective packages until installation, and handling these devices with an electrostatic-discharge wrist strap or other grounding system.
- Read the safety information and guidelines to ensure that you work safely.
- A complete list of safety information for all products is available at: Safety Information page
- Handling static-sensitive devices
Make sure the components you are installing are supported by the server. For a list of supported optional components for the server, see Lenovo ServerProven website.
When you install a new server, download and apply the latest firmware. This will help ensure that any known issues are addressed, and that your server is ready to work with optimal performance. Go to ThinkSystem ST550 Drivers and Software to download firmware updates for your server.
Important: Some cluster solutions require specific code levels or coordinated code updates. If the component is part of a cluster solution, verify that the latest level of code is supported for the cluster solution before you update the code.
It is good practice to make sure that the server is working correctly before you install an optional component.
Keep the working area clean, and place removed components on a flat and smooth surface that does not shake or tilt.
Do not attempt to lift an object that might be too heavy for you. If you have to lift a heavy object, read the following precautions carefully:
- Make sure that you can stand steadily without slipping.
- Distribute the weight of the object equally between your feet.
- Use a slow lifting force. Never move suddenly or twist when you lift a heavy object.
- To avoid straining the muscles in your back, lift by standing or by pushing up with your leg muscles.
Make sure that you have an adequate number of properly grounded electrical outlets for the server, monitor, and other devices.
Back up all important data before you make changes related to the disk drives.
Have a small flat-blade screwdriver, a small Phillips screwdriver, and a T8 torx screwdriver available.
You do not have to turn off the server to remove or install hot-swap power supplies or hot-plug USB devices. However, you must turn off the server before you perform any steps that involve removing or installing adapter cables, and you must disconnect the power source from the server before you perform any steps that involve removing or installing a DIMM.
Blue on a component indicates touch points, where you can grip to remove a component from or install it in the server, open or close a latch, and so on.
Orange on a component or an orange label on or near a component indicates that the component can be hot-swapped if the server and operating system support hot-swap capability, which means that you can remove or install the component while the server is still running. (Orange can also indicate touch points on hot-swap components.) See the instructions for removing or installing a specific hot-swap component for any additional procedures that you might have to perform before you remove or install the component.
The Red strip on the drives, adjacent to the release latch, indicates that the drive can be hot-swapped if the server and operating system support hot-swap capability. This means that you can remove or install the drive while the server is still running.
Note: See the system specific instructions for removing or installing a hot-swap drive for any additional procedures that you might need to perform before you remove or install the drive.
After finishing working on the server, make sure you reinstall all safety shields, guards, labels, and ground wires.
The following minimum hardware requirements and recommendations apply to all computers running Tableau Server, including physical hardware and virtual machines (VMs):
Minimum requirements for installation reflect the minimum hardware your computer must have in order to install Tableau Server. We do not recommend you attempt run Tableau Server on servers with these values, even if you are just testing. Depending the features you have licensed and are using, you may experience poor performance and an unrealistic experience. In certain cases Tableau Server may not start without at least 20GB of memory.
For prototyping and Proof of Concept (PoC) testing, we recommend you use Tableau Cloud. This will give you an opportunity to experience Tableau Server on appropriately sized hardware.
Minimum recommendations for production go beyond minimum installation requirements, and represent the minimum hardware configuration you should use for installation on most production nodes. If your computer meets the minimum installation requirements but does not meet these recommendations, the Setup program will warn you but you can continue the installation. For certain nodes dedicated to specific tasks and processes such as backgrounder, or Prep, you may be able to use servers that do not meet this minimum recommendation.
In addition, Tableau Server should not be installed on a physical computer or on a VM instance that is also running resource-intensive applications such as databases or application servers.
Note: If you install Tableau Server on a computer that meets the minimum requirements but does not have at least 8 cores and 16 GB of system memory, the default number of all processes installed is reduced to one of each process by design. For more information about processes, see Server Process Limits
Looking for Tableau Server on Linux? See Minimum Hardware Requirements and Recommendations for Tableau Server(Link opens in a new window).
Minimum installation hardware requirements
We strongly recommend any Proof of Concept (PoC) testing or prototyping be done using Tableau Cloud. This guarantees you will be running on systems with adequate resources.
The computer on which you are installing or upgrading Tableau Server must meet the minimum hardware installation requirements. If the Setup program determines that your computer does not meet the following requirements, you will not be able to install Tableau Server. Meeting these requirements does not guarantee you a good experience testing Tableau Server
For more information on how the Setup program determines hardware, see Determining Computer Hardware.
Minimum Hardware Requirements
These minimum requirements are for installing Tableau Server. They do not guarantee successful testing or use. For production minimum recommendations, see Minimum production hardware recommendations.
| 4 cores (8 vCPUs) | Version 2022.3 and later:
Version 2022.1 and earlier:
| 15 GB |
Free disk space is calculated after the Tableau Server Setup program is unzipped. The Setup program uses about 1 GB of space. You may need to allocate additional disk space depending on various factors like whether you will be using extracts.
Core count is based on "physical" cores. Physical cores can represent actual server hardware or cores on a virtual machine (VM). Hyper-threading is ignored for the purposes of counting cores.
For production use, the computers on which you install or upgrade Tableau Server should, in most cases, meet or exceed the minimum hardware recommendations. These recommendations are general. Actual system needs for Tableau Server installations can vary based on many factors, including number of users and the number and size of extracts, as well as the features you have licensed. If the Setup program determines that your computer does not meet the following recommendations, you will get a warning, but you can continue with the installation process. For more information, see the Hardware recommendations for production installations.
Single node |
| 8 cores (16 vCPUs), 2.0 GHz or higher | Version 2022.3 and later:
Version 2021.4.0 to version 2022.1.x:
Version 2021.3.x and earlier:
| 500 GB - 1 TB |
If you are adding Tableau Prep Conductor to your Tableau Server installation, we recommend you add a second node and dedicate this to running Tableau Server Prep Conductor. This node should have a minimum of 4 cores (8 vCPUs), and 16 GB of RAM. | ||||
Multi-node and enterprise deployments | Contact Tableau for technical guidance. Nodes must meet or exceed the minimum hardware recommendations, except:
|
Important: The disk space requirement cannot be checked until you initialize TSM.
Free disk space is calculated after the Tableau Server Setup program is unzipped. The Setup program uses about 1 GB of space. You may need to allocate additional disk space depending on various factors like whether you will be using extracts.
Network attached storage space requirements for External File Store: If you are planning to configure Tableau Server with External File Store, you will need to estimate the amount of storage space to dedicate on your network attached storage.
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.
- Extracts:
Core count is based on "physical" cores. Physical cores can represent actual server hardware or cores on a virtual machine (VM). Hyper-threading is ignored for the purposes of counting cores.
RAM shown is the minimum recommended for a single-node installation. Your installation may function better with more RAM, depending on activity, number of users, and background jobs, for example.
Determining Computer Hardware
To determine how many physical cores a computer has, the Tableau Server setup program queries the operating system. To view hardware information that the setup program detected on your computer, open the app-install.log file in the following folder on the computer where you are installing Tableau Server:
<install directory>\ProgramData\Tableau\Tableau Server\logs\app-install.logIn the app-install.log file, look for lines similar to the following. These lines provide information about the physical cores that the setup program detected and that it used to determine the core count that is being used for licensing, as well as the amount of system memory that was detected.
2020-11-24 17:40:43.842 +0000 main : DEBUG com.tableausoftware.tabadmin.configuration.builder.BootstrapConfigurationBuilder - System processor count = 8 2020-11-24 17:40:43.842 +0000 main : DEBUG com.tableausoftware.tabadmin.configuration.builder.BootstrapConfigurationBuilder - System memory = 64383MBManually determining the number of cores on your computer
To determine manually how many physical cores your server has, you can use the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line tool (WMIC). This is useful if you do not know whether your computer will meet the minimum hardware requirements for installing Tableau Server.
Open a command prompt.
Enter the following command:
WMIC CPU Get DeviceID,NumberOfCoresThe output will display the device ID or IDs and the number of physical cores the computer has.
In this example, there are two CPUs, each with six cores, for a total of twelve physical cores. This computer would satisfy the minimum hardware requirements for installing Tableau Server.
The following command shows a longer version that lists the logical processors as well as the physical cores.
WMIC CPU Get DeviceID,NumberOfCores,NumberOfLogicalProcessors,SocketDesignationIn the above example, the server has a total of twelve physical cores, resulting in 24 logical cores.