Understanding and Improving Server

Performance
Alan Doerhoefer
Timothy Hanson
Tableau Software Inc.
All rights reserved. 2009 Tableau Software Inc.

How To Improve Server Performance

Steps to Great Performance
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Learn the architecture

Use appropriate hardware
Use distributed server
Use server extracts
Tune
Monitor
Troubleshoot
Learn the types of views
Understand the load test results

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Understand Server Architecture

Tableau Server

Load Balancer

Tableau
Professio
nal

All rights reserved. 2009 Tableau Software Inc.

Application State

Data
Sources
Web
Web
VizQL
App
App
Processes

Repository
Application
Web
Web
(WG)
App
App
Processes

Use Appropriate Server Hardware

Good Server for performance:
Windows Server 2003 or 2008 64 bit
16 GB RAM
Fast RAID-5 Drives
Gigabit Network Card
8 Fast CPU cores

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Use Appropriate Server Hardware

But Tableau Server will work on lower
class hardware:
Windows Server 2003 32 bit
2 GB RAM
Any type of drive
100 Mb Network Card
2 slow CPU cores

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Use Distributed Server

Worker 1
VizQL
or
VizQL
or
VizQL
or
WG
WG
Application
Processes
Processes
Processes

Main
Load Balancer

Worker N
Application State

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Repository

Worker 2
VizQL
or
VizQL
oror
VizQL
WG
WG
Application
Processes
Processes
Processes

Use Distributed Server

Installation is fast and easy

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Use Distributed Server

Installation

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Use Distributed Server

Determining the number

Use 2

of server processes

X the number of processor cores

Example
3 server cluster (2 workers)
8 cores per machine
Use 2 x 8 = 16 App processes on one worker
Use 2 x 8 = 16 VizQL processes on the other worker
All rights reserved. 2009 Tableau Software Inc.

Use Server Extracts

New in 5.0
A database that stores extracts of user data locally and efficiently
Performance is improved since data is local and indexed
Data can be filtered and aggregated as part of the extract
Can be set to refresh data sources automatically on a schedule
The following extract database types are supported:
Built-In
Postgres
MySQL
Microsoft SQL Server
Please attend Extracts: Fast Data To Go Thurs. 11 am for more
extract details
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Tune the OS
Windows 2003 Server (SP1 or Later)
TCP Setting
Not an issue in Windows 2008 Server
Set SynAttackProtect to zero:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\P
arameters] "SynAttackProtect"=dword:00000000

Disable other processes

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Tune the Server

Session Timeouts
Can be changed in the configuration file
Tableau Server\config\tabsvc.yml

WG Session
Default is 4 hours
To change it to 1 hour add this to tabsvc.yml:
wgserver.session.idle_limit: 60

VizQL Session
Default is 2 hours
To change it to 30 minutes add this to
tabsvc.yml:
vizqlserver.session.expiry.timeout: 30

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Monitor Server
Server Status

Demo

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Monitor Server
Server Activity

Demo

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Monitor Server
User Activity

Demo

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Troubleshoot Server
Apache logs
Contains information about every request to server at the HTTP request
level

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Troubleshoot Server
WG logs and VizQL logs
Contains details of each operation performed by the server

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Troubleshoot Server
tabadmin ziplogs command
collects all logs even on a distributed cluster into one archive

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Understand View Types and

Performance
Three Types Of Views:
1. Fast
- Fast query
- Fast rendering

2. Query-bound
- Slow query
- Fast Rendering
- Same as Fast once query is cached

3. CPU-bound
- Render-Intensive
- Uses the most CPU
- Example: text tables with thousands of cells

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Understand the Load Test Results

Capabilities of:
1 machine
3 machines
5 machines
* Note that these tests show results from a
specific test configuration and should not be
taken as a guarantee of client response times.
These benchmark results were returned in a
controlled lab environment, without other
applications running during execution. Actual
results will vary based on load type, hardware,
network speed, browser settings, and
database performance.
All rights reserved. 2009 Tableau Software Inc.

Understand the Load Test Results

Initial View Load Times

Effect of caching

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5 servers in our
load tests served
2,250 named
users, or 225
concurrent users

Understand the Load Test Results

Caching
- Pre-load views whenever possible to improve initial load times

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Summary
Keys to Performance:
- Understand view

types

- Understand and utilize the distributed

- Use server

architecture

extracts

- Learn how to monitor and investigate

All rights reserved. 2009 Tableau Software Inc.