Hi Ivan

The answer is natively; No.

Tableau Server will complain that you do not have sufficient licensing, and not work.

Your option is to then go into you Windows Msconfig, and then limit the number of cores being shown. (A reboot is required)

Windows will then display 8 cores (or whatever) and Tableau Server will work

I dont know if there is a performance overhead doing this.

You could also try going into the BIOS of the Windows Server and disabling a CPU. (fi you have multiple CPUs)

So for example, if you had a 2 x CPU server with 8 cores per server, disabling one of the CPUs will limit you to 8 cores.

Hope this helps

Glen

Hi Ivan

If you take the first approach of limiting the core count within Windows does this not give you the option of selecting 8 core?

Instead of disabling one of the CPUs?

regards

Glen

We also wish that Tableau would provide a solution for that. It's really something that is blocking us to scale-out.

That sounds like it will work.

Tableau counts the # of active cores prior to hyperthreading.  So in our case, we have a 24 core license and we split this between 3 worker nodes (8 cores each).  And then we have hyperthreading enabled, so it looks like 16 cores each, but really it's 8.

I just spoke with my wife about this.  She was a server and mobile technology validation engineer for a major computer chip manufacturer.  She said as far as she knew that software (Tableau Server software install in this example) wouldn't be able to easily change the number of cores unless it modified the chip's BIOS, reducing the available cores there.

Having more cores than licenses isn't what I would consider a common issue but it's readily rectified by changing the BIOS, nothing to get heartburn over.

Another possibility is to create a Virtual Machine on your box that reserves 8 cores for itself, and install Tableau Server on that. When it's time to scale out, you can reserve the additional 8 so that your VM is consuming all resources on the server. Or alternatively, set Tableau Server up on the physical host at that point, backup and restore Tableau Server to it, then delete the old VM. Bit of an administrative headache but it avoids you having to pay for the 16-core license.

My wife just called me back and mentioned what Glen suggested as a valid option.  Tableau would be able to program that into their code if they wanted.  Another option is to go into the Task Manager and change the CPU Affinity for each process (my note:  Not recommended, too many processes to deal with!)

I still think Glen's suggestion or mine (BIOS change) are your two best options.  I know with the BIOS change it would be 'permanent' even during reboots until it was manually changed at a later date.

She also sighed and said that not using those other CPUs is a big waste of resources and thus money.  Love that woman!

we turn off CPU's via the BIOS (to conform to licensing), and it works.  Though I do agree with the misses sigh.

Lol, thank you Toby and Wife.

Good to know

Extra CPU cycles on a corporate box you don't pay for? I smell a Bitcoin mining opportunity!