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15. Re: Hardware for the best Tableau performance
Allan Walker Aug 30, 2013 11:56 AM (in response to Cristian Vasile)Christian,
Just done some benchmarking with a ram disk. I chose SoftPerfect Ram disk.
Number of marks: 5,500,000
Mark type: Polygon
Package workbook on local hard drive: Time to go from opening file to fully render: 1 minute, 42 seconds
Package workbook on (2GB NTFS) RAM drive: Time to go from opening file to fully render: 45 seconds
This is incredible.
Test data: Australian postcodes, csv files
Output:
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16. Re: Re: Hardware for the best Tableau performance
Cristian Vasile Aug 30, 2013 1:08 PM (in response to Allan Walker)1 of 1 people found this helpfulHello Allan,
I am glad that you did run benchmarks against a RAM disk.
One more suggestion, try to instruct Tableau Desktop to keep internal temporary files on ram disk, maybe you should touch the TEMP and TMP environment variables. I am sure you could squeeze more juice from RAM disk approach.
From command prompt type set and see where the tmp files are stored, in my case looks like this:
TEMP=C:\Users\cristi\AppData\Local\Temp
TMP=C:\Users\cristi\AppData\Local\Temp
The performance recordings did reveal something unusual ?
Regards,
Cristian.
P.S.
worth to read One Dot Per Person for the Entire United States
This gentleman did a fantastic job - 300M points placed on a US map. -
17. Re: Re: Hardware for the best Tableau performance
Allan Walker Aug 30, 2013 1:30 PM (in response to Cristian Vasile)Christian,
If I have set up my RAM disk on R:\
Do I need to change the variable to be
TEMP=R:\
TMP=R:\
?
The most marks I have managed is 0.1 billion (110,000,000)
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18. Re: Hardware for the best Tableau performance
Cristian Vasile Feb 4, 2014 5:54 AM (in response to Allan Walker)1 of 1 people found this helpfulFor testing purpose yes, put R:\ but write down the existing paths to be able to restore them.
Other option will be to create a small .cmd file with one command inside like this
md R:\path\to\Temp
and place it on
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
folder so every time you boot the Temp folder is created on RAM disk.
Don't forget to update TEMP and TMP to point to R:\path\to\Temp if you chose this route.
Regards,
Cristian.
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19. Re: Hardware for the best Tableau performance
Cristian Vasile Aug 17, 2014 1:02 PM (in response to Allan Walker)Hello Allan,
I do a small research today (thanks to process monitor utility) and Tableau Desktop 8.0 use as temporary area this directory on my machine
C:\Users\Cristian\AppData\Local\Temp\TableauTemp
The User variables in my case are:
TEMP=%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp
TMP=%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp
and System variabiles are:
TEMP=C:\Windows\TEMP
TMP=C:\Windows\TEMP
Maybe you should try to update also the user variables with R:\....\Temp string and run again the benchmark suite.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Cristian.
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20. Re: Hardware for the best Tableau performance
Timothy Vermeiren Aug 19, 2014 1:12 AM (in response to Cristian Vasile)Note that you can also assign this path as the temp folder(s) using a script. Simply use the set command to modify the variables:
set TEMP=R:\path\to\Temp
set TMP=R:\path\to\Temp
Actually I could imagine having a script to create and use the RAM Disk as temporary environment, and another one to revert to regular settings.
Create and use:
md R:\path\to\Temp
set TEMP=R:\path\to\Temp
set TMP=R:\path\to\Temp
Revert to default:
rd /s R:\path\to\Temp
set TEMP=%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp
set TMP=%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp
Or something along those lines...
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21. Re: Hardware for the best Tableau performance
Blake Donen Jan 27, 2015 9:12 PM (in response to Timothy Vermeiren)I'm also looking to get a new machine for Tableau. I'm not interested in meeting the minimum requirements...I'm looking to get the fastest tableau machine for the money, so I'm wondering what components are most important.
The baseline machine (Cheap, commodity specs) are:
* Intel i5
* SATA drive
* 8GB RAM
* Discrete graphics card
If I'm going to upgrade the machine, what are the priorities for the upgrades? In other words, which are most important?
i7 vs SSD vs 16GB RAM vs High Performance Graphics card.
Thanks.
-Mark
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22. Re: Hardware for the best Tableau performance
Cristian Vasile Jan 28, 2015 4:43 AM (in response to Blake Donen)Mark,
Memory is important and also CPU.
Regards,
Cristian.
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23. Re: Hardware for the best Tableau performance
Toby ErksonJan 28, 2015 9:26 AM (in response to Blake Donen)
Blake Donen wrote:
I'm also looking to get a new machine for Tableau. I'm not interested in meeting the minimum requirements...I'm looking to get the fastest tableau machine for the money, so I'm wondering what components are most important.
The baseline machine (Cheap, commodity specs) are:
* Intel i5
* SATA drive
* 8GB RAM
* Discrete graphics card
If I'm going to upgrade the machine, what are the priorities for the upgrades? In other words, which are most important?
i7 vs SSD vs 16GB RAM vs High Performance Graphics card.
Thanks.
-Mark
Blake/Mark, See Dan Cory's answers within this thread.
A RAM disk / SSD would be your best bet for disk I/O I would think. Depending on how much data your reports consume, Cristian is right, RAM is king.