6 ms·

If you've ever run tableau server, you know why.

bsg75 11y ago
I run a small one, with little effort other than what comes along with Windows - its our only Windows based system. I would be interesting to know what the problems you have faced are.
- EC1 11y ago
  I think a better question is what problems they haven't faced.
  - tremguy 11y ago
    +1
  - untog 11y ago
    This is an extremely frustrating thread to follow. We have some people who have run a Tableau server with no issues, and now two people who are effectively saying "oh, it's awful but I have no interest in telling you why".
    - EC1 11y ago
      I wouldn't even know where to start to be completely honest.
      - recursive 11y ago
        Thanks for your honesty, but I hope you understand that's completely useless. I might have preferred if you lied.
        EC1 11y ago
        To be completely honest I've never even heard of Tableau.
    - karmawitch 11y ago
      five people telling in detail horror stories that make every other devop feel the pain? (except those seasoned exchange-experts of course) did you ever consider there might be valid reasons some folks prefer *nix based servers?
      - untog 11y ago
        five people telling in detail horror stories that make every other devop feel the pain? Check the timestamps of those messages vs mine. At the time there were only the two responses I mentioned.
        karmawitch 11y ago
        you have a point there
  - bsg75 11y ago
    > I think a better question is what problems they haven't faced. Deploying visualizations without having to develop any HTML or JavaScript code. Publishing to the desktop (Windows or Mac), to the web, to the cloud, or mobile devices (iOS and Android). Publish to the server once, consume on all supported platforms. Deploying a copy of a current site for redundancy, testing or development. Install the app, backup the primary Tableau database with its admin utility (command line), restore it on the new box. All data, visualizations, users and permissions are contained in that single restore step. Tableau means I spend time working with my data, instead of the presentation of it. Its not a perfect product by any measure, and could obviously use some improvements, but is a timesaver in many areas.
- click170 11y ago
  My experiences are very different. Many Linux services have a concept of reloading. If the config file changes you can send the running program a signal and it will re read the config. This is very useful for production systems. Tableau (9 at least) has no such concept. Change the email address it reports to? Restart tableau. Change the location of the SSL certificates? Restart tableau. Want to apply an update for tableau? Uninstall your current version and install the new one. Oh and until recently when you downloaded the installer for tableau server the file name didn't actually contain the version number. This product was not designed with ops in mind at all. Edit: I forgot, I've actually had a tableau server fill itself up with logs. Tableau has logs in many different locations outside of windows event viewer and doesn't include log rotation facilities for all if them.
  - radicalbyte 11y ago
    That sounds like most Enterprise software. It's like that because R&D and Operations never talk; and of course your average Windows Ops person has a poor understanding of operating systems.
  - Florin_Andrei 11y ago
    "tabadmin cleanup" helps a little. But yeah, this thing is a mess.
  - bsg75 11y ago
    Those things are indeed a pain with Tableau, and also common with a lot of Windows based applications. Never understood why Tableau is either Windows only or has the restart to reconfig issue. Last I looked, it was largely a Tomcat and PostgreSQL based product.
    - click170 11y ago
      [Replied to wrong comment]
  - Eridrus 11y ago
    What's the actual issue with restarts? Is the downtime due to a restart unacceptable? Is it that users lose application state when a restart happens? Just trying to understand since I've written software with the same restart to config workflow and would like to understand what causes it to be problematic.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
yelnatz 11y ago
Well, as some who doesn't can you enlighten me?
- andrewvc 11y ago
  It takes an ungodly amount of resources to do not very much. It's very buggy, frequently the HTML charts time out or just break with no indication why. Upgrades require a lot of manual work. The javascript API is reasonably documented, but, again, buggy. It's an unholy combination of rails and postgres somehow hacked to run on windows. Really, they should just ship a linux VM that runs these things decently.
walker7734 11y ago
I would very much like to know what particular issues you are having as well? I work at Tableau and I would like to make sure that issues people are seeing are on our radar, if they aren't already.
- wsh 11y ago
  Thanks for asking. I just installed 9.0.4, and here are a few examples: - Tableau Server runs only on Windows, so why can't it use a TLS certificate and key from the CryptoAPI certificate store, rather than requiring these to be converted to PEM format (with Unix line endings!) and saved in the file system? In an enterprise with an internal CA using Active Directory Certificate Services, these extra steps have to be done not only at installation but also every time the certificate expires. Compare the experience with Microsoft IIS: the server automatically requests a renewal from AD CS, retrieves the new certificate, and begins using it. - Tableau Server should be able to run as a Group Managed Service Account, so we can give it access to remote data sources without having to assign (and regularly change) yet another service account password. - It would be helpful to have an scriptable installation process; as far as I can tell, there's no way to install Tableau Server without clicking through wizards.
  - walker7734 11y ago
    Thanks for the input. I am going to forward these on to the server dev team and follow up with them in person. They may be aware of some of these already but it is important to us to keep track of what is causing our users the most headaches. I appreciate you taking the time and letting me know your suggestions and the issues you are having!
  - shrikant 11y ago
    Ive done a Tableau Server rollout at a previous client, and iirc, we were easily able to run it as a managed service account. (Microsoft AD) Any specific difficulties you faced with this..?
- joombaga 11y ago
  [1] I had to set the client-side map rendering threshold to a very high number (100000 I believe) to get maps to render at all. Server-side rendering doesn't work, even though it can contact the map servers and display all of the examples in the documentation (Miami/Havana I think?). [2] It's been a few months, but I remember getting the license activated offline was a weird process. Something like, point tabadmin toward a license file, which generates a number or json or some other file, which you then paste into or point the UI toward, which gives you another file to use in tabadmin... and at the end tabadmin gave me error. Now when I go to "Manage Product Keys" it acts as though it is unregistered, but the server still starts without error (it did not before the failed activation ritual). I do have a ticket in with support for [1]. Given how much of a bitch it was to activate (or half-activate) I'm reluctant to investigate [2] further. Also, I'd like to see a linux server. Tableau is our only Windows server, which weighed heavily against the product when we were considering alternatives.

bsg75 11y ago

I run a small one, with little effort other than what comes along with Windows - its our only Windows based system. I would be interesting to know what the problems you have faced are.

EC1 11y ago
I think a better question is what problems they haven't faced.
- tremguy 11y ago
  +1
- untog 11y ago
  This is an extremely frustrating thread to follow. We have some people who have run a Tableau server with no issues, and now two people who are effectively saying "oh, it's awful but I have no interest in telling you why".
  - EC1 11y ago
    I wouldn't even know where to start to be completely honest.
    - recursive 11y ago
      Thanks for your honesty, but I hope you understand that's completely useless. I might have preferred if you lied.
      - EC1 11y ago
        To be completely honest I've never even heard of Tableau.
  - karmawitch 11y ago
    five people telling in detail horror stories that make every other devop feel the pain? (except those seasoned exchange-experts of course) did you ever consider there might be valid reasons some folks prefer *nix based servers?
    - untog 11y ago
      five people telling in detail horror stories that make every other devop feel the pain? Check the timestamps of those messages vs mine. At the time there were only the two responses I mentioned.
      - karmawitch 11y ago
        you have a point there
- bsg75 11y ago
  > I think a better question is what problems they haven't faced. Deploying visualizations without having to develop any HTML or JavaScript code. Publishing to the desktop (Windows or Mac), to the web, to the cloud, or mobile devices (iOS and Android). Publish to the server once, consume on all supported platforms. Deploying a copy of a current site for redundancy, testing or development. Install the app, backup the primary Tableau database with its admin utility (command line), restore it on the new box. All data, visualizations, users and permissions are contained in that single restore step. Tableau means I spend time working with my data, instead of the presentation of it. Its not a perfect product by any measure, and could obviously use some improvements, but is a timesaver in many areas.
click170 11y ago
My experiences are very different. Many Linux services have a concept of reloading. If the config file changes you can send the running program a signal and it will re read the config. This is very useful for production systems. Tableau (9 at least) has no such concept. Change the email address it reports to? Restart tableau. Change the location of the SSL certificates? Restart tableau. Want to apply an update for tableau? Uninstall your current version and install the new one. Oh and until recently when you downloaded the installer for tableau server the file name didn't actually contain the version number. This product was not designed with ops in mind at all. Edit: I forgot, I've actually had a tableau server fill itself up with logs. Tableau has logs in many different locations outside of windows event viewer and doesn't include log rotation facilities for all if them.
- radicalbyte 11y ago
  That sounds like most Enterprise software. It's like that because R&D and Operations never talk; and of course your average Windows Ops person has a poor understanding of operating systems.
- Florin_Andrei 11y ago
  "tabadmin cleanup" helps a little. But yeah, this thing is a mess.
- bsg75 11y ago
  Those things are indeed a pain with Tableau, and also common with a lot of Windows based applications. Never understood why Tableau is either Windows only or has the restart to reconfig issue. Last I looked, it was largely a Tomcat and PostgreSQL based product.
  - click170 11y ago
    [Replied to wrong comment]
- Eridrus 11y ago
  What's the actual issue with restarts? Is the downtime due to a restart unacceptable? Is it that users lose application state when a restart happens? Just trying to understand since I've written software with the same restart to config workflow and would like to understand what causes it to be problematic.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

yelnatz 11y ago

Well, as some who doesn't can you enlighten me?

andrewvc 11y ago
It takes an ungodly amount of resources to do not very much. It's very buggy, frequently the HTML charts time out or just break with no indication why. Upgrades require a lot of manual work. The javascript API is reasonably documented, but, again, buggy. It's an unholy combination of rails and postgres somehow hacked to run on windows. Really, they should just ship a linux VM that runs these things decently.

walker7734 11y ago

I would very much like to know what particular issues you are having as well? I work at Tableau and I would like to make sure that issues people are seeing are on our radar, if they aren't already.

wsh 11y ago
Thanks for asking. I just installed 9.0.4, and here are a few examples: - Tableau Server runs only on Windows, so why can't it use a TLS certificate and key from the CryptoAPI certificate store, rather than requiring these to be converted to PEM format (with Unix line endings!) and saved in the file system? In an enterprise with an internal CA using Active Directory Certificate Services, these extra steps have to be done not only at installation but also every time the certificate expires. Compare the experience with Microsoft IIS: the server automatically requests a renewal from AD CS, retrieves the new certificate, and begins using it. - Tableau Server should be able to run as a Group Managed Service Account, so we can give it access to remote data sources without having to assign (and regularly change) yet another service account password. - It would be helpful to have an scriptable installation process; as far as I can tell, there's no way to install Tableau Server without clicking through wizards.
- walker7734 11y ago
  Thanks for the input. I am going to forward these on to the server dev team and follow up with them in person. They may be aware of some of these already but it is important to us to keep track of what is causing our users the most headaches. I appreciate you taking the time and letting me know your suggestions and the issues you are having!
- shrikant 11y ago
  Ive done a Tableau Server rollout at a previous client, and iirc, we were easily able to run it as a managed service account. (Microsoft AD) Any specific difficulties you faced with this..?
joombaga 11y ago
[1] I had to set the client-side map rendering threshold to a very high number (100000 I believe) to get maps to render at all. Server-side rendering doesn't work, even though it can contact the map servers and display all of the examples in the documentation (Miami/Havana I think?). [2] It's been a few months, but I remember getting the license activated offline was a weird process. Something like, point tabadmin toward a license file, which generates a number or json or some other file, which you then paste into or point the UI toward, which gives you another file to use in tabadmin... and at the end tabadmin gave me error. Now when I go to "Manage Product Keys" it acts as though it is unregistered, but the server still starts without error (it did not before the failed activation ritual). I do have a ticket in with support for [1]. Given how much of a bitch it was to activate (or half-activate) I'm reluctant to investigate [2] further. Also, I'd like to see a linux server. Tableau is our only Windows server, which weighed heavily against the product when we were considering alternatives.