Tableau in the Cloud!
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Tableau is a top leader in the business intelligence space offering state of the art data visualization techniques and dashboard development for insightful visual analytics. The current tableau product offerings: Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Reader, and Tableau Online. And in this post i’m going to show you how to create a Tableau development environment in CloudShare to start any Tableau project.
The CloudShare virtualization platform makes it easy to set-up, install, and test a Tableau implementation. CloudShare’s flexible approach in creating virtual environments provides an efficient and cost effective platform to start a big data project , and test tableau implementation and reporting functionality. This blog will cover the various aspects of installing, configuring, and implementing successfully in a CloudShare environment.
- Installing Tableau Server
- Connecting to Tableau Server on CloudShare VM from any machine
- Configuring Active Directory in CloudShare environment and setting up with Tableau Server to enable users in your CloudShare environment have appropriate access.
- Scaling out Tableau Server implementation by adding worker machines on multiple vms in CloudShare environment
Installing Tableau Server in a CloudShare environment:
In order to install Tableau Server in a CloudShare environment, the environment must first be provisioned. CloudShare offers several template VMs to choose from. Tableau Server system requirements are the following for version 8.1:
http://www.tableausoftware.com/products/server/specs
We’ll choose the ‘Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Standard’ template for this use case:
Once the VM is added we need to configure it with the appropriate amount of hard disk space and RAM by going to edit environment in our CloudShare environment home screen.
After our VM is prepared in our CloudShare Environment we can then view the VM and install the files needed for Tableau Server install. The tableau server install files can be found here*: http://www.tableausoftware.com/products/trial
*Note that Tableau Software provides a free two-week evaluation of their software products.
Be sure to extend the volume of your virtual disk in you CloudShare VM:
Once the file is downloaded we can navigate to the folder where it is saved and proceed to start the installation.
Select the ‘Start Trial Now’ to continue the Tableau Server installation.
For now we will choose to keep ‘Local Authentication’ as our User Authentication. Tableau can be configured with Active Directory as well. Using CloudShare’s pre-configured Active Directory template and CloudShares environments built in Active Directory support can be successfully be integrated with the Tableau Server.
Create an administrator user for the Tableau Server to use and add it to the Tableau Server Configuration as the ‘Server Run As User’
Note: Username is entered with VM Computer name
Create your Tableau Administrator Password:
Your browser will open up to the Tableau Administrative and Repository page:
Connect to your Tableau Server on Cloudshare from any machine
Using the External Address in your Cloudshare environment you can connect to your Tableau Server on Cloudshare from any machine:
From a Browser: Just type in the External Address into the browser and log in with your created account.
From Tableau Desktop:
Once you have built out your environment make sure you take a snapshot so you can protect your work, and copy it over and over again for other projects.
No matter if you are new to Tableau or need a place to start your project. You now have an excellent location to do all of your work. You can easily share with your users. Test new functionality without concern of breaking things.
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