Best practices for running Tableau on a VM (Virtual Machine)

Tableau Server is resource-intensive and latency-sensitive, that’s why if you are running Tableau on a VM then dedicated resources required.

1.       Dedicated vCPU

100% dedicated vCPU allocation – should not be pooled or shared.

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.

2.       Dedicated RAM

Fully (100%) pre-allocated, no pooling or sharing, no dynamic RAM.

Contiguous on the host server.

Suggested 128GB RAM per 8 core for Enterprise Deployments.

3.       Disk

Write speed is often the bottle neck, faster the better!

150MB/s or less = BAD

250MB/s+ WRITE = GOOD

400MB/s to 1GB/s+ = GREAT

250MB/s Write & 1GB/s Read = Good performance

Tiered SAN: Tableau should be on higher tier with better IO than typical storage level tier.

No underlying network attached storage (NAS) for disk.

Always note that Poorly tuned VM’s results “Poor performance” and Wasted $$ on core purchases

VM Tuning Tips Directly From VMWare

  

•       Performance Best Practices for vSphere 5.5

                 (http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere5.5.pdf)

–        See page 17 for recommended BIOS setting

•       Deploying Extremely Latency-Sensitive Applications in vSphere 5.5 (http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/latency-sensitive-perf-vsphere55.pdf)

–        See page 15 for best practices for latency-sensitive applications

•       Upgrade network adapter driver in VM cluster

Other things needs to consider

•       Virus Scan can impact performance

–        Improve Performance by using antivirus exclusions

•       Network latency between worker machines should be less than 10ms.

•       Single network hop between servers (contiguous network access).

Regards
Satishbabu Gunukula, Oracle ACE
http://oracleracexpert.com