Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Linux deployment support single and multi-server deployments? The Linux deployment supports both single and multi-server deployments.
Which type of multi-server deployments are supported on Linux? The initial Sisense release supports: 1 build node, 2 app/query nodes, and 0-n additional query nodes. Starting from Sisense V8.0, multiple build nodes are supported.
Which flavor of Linux is supported? See Linux Minimum Requirements for the latest supported flavors.
Do Linux deployments support all the features included in Windows deployment? The Linux release supports the same general feature set as Windows, with some differences:
  • Only the Data page is available for creating and editing Sisense models. The desktop ElastiCube manager is not supported on Linux at all.
  • Only connectors supported by the Data page (web-based ElastiCube manager) are supported by Linux.
  • PSM.exe is not supported on Linux. The functionality provided by PSM.exe is available over new Linux CLI and/or REST API.

For more information, see Sisense on Windows versus Linux.

Which connectors are supported on Linux?

Note:

For the list of supported connectors, see Introduction to Data Sources.

What will our users experience when their server is moved to Linux? Sisense on Linux provides a web UI similar to the windows web UI. The changes users experience depends on their roles, as follows:
  • Viewers : No change at all.
  • Designers : Minor changes. The concept of ElastiCube Sets doesn’t exist in Linux. Dashboards are created on ElastiCubes, also in multi-server deployments. Except for that, no change.
  • Data Designers : No concept of remote servers. All Models are created on the same cluster. Except for that, no change.
  • Data Admins : No concept of remote servers. All Models are created on the same cluster.
  • Administrators : Administrator users are the main role who will experience a difference when working on Linux. The main difference is the installation and upgrade, which are completely different in Linux. The method for installing all extensions (plugins, email templates, rebranding files) is different. Some administrative activities are different, for example the mechanism for configuring and defining high-availability has completely changed. There is a new concept of Data Groups for managing ElastiCube orchestration and resources replacing the Windows High-Availability orchestrator. Some administrative activities are exactly the same on Linux as on Windows, for example,User Management, Group creation, Active Directory, and more.
Is there a migration process from Windows to Linux? There is an automatic migration process from Windows Sisense V7.2 and later to Linux. The process migrates almost all the assets customers created, including: User management (users, groups, data security rules), ElastiCubes, dashboards, plugins, email templates, languages, and rebranding files. Customers will need to upgrade to Sisense V7.2 or later to use the migration tool.
How long does it take for the migration process to run? The migration process takes between 10 minutes to a few hours depending on the size of the data that needs to be migrated.
Sisense recommends that you migrate only the ElastiCube metadata without the ElastiCube data(.sdata files) to shorten the migration duration. In that case, following the migration, “build entire” is required on the ElastiCubes migrated to the Linux system before the dashboards can be viewed.
How long does it take to provision a Linux deployment? The installation of a single node and of multi-node deployments takes up to 10 minutes as long as the environment has a good internet connection.
How does the deployment work? The installation is a relatively small tar.gz file containing a set of scripts/ansible/helm configuration files and definitions for installing the system. Most of the system is installed from a Docker hub and public Ubuntu repositories using apt get.
What is the required servers size? The Linux installation requires a similar machine spec to the Windows servers used by existing deployments, with an additional 4GB of memory for the cluster management.
How should a single server Linux be installed? Sisense recommends the Linux server be installed with 2 disks or at least two partitions:
  • The Linux disk should have at least 50GB.
  • The second disk is used for the ElastiCubes. It’s size depends on the data size mounted on /opt/sisense/storage.
Minimal Size : 100GB
Recommended : At least the size of all the ElastiCubes * 2.5
Which user is needed to configure and deploy the Linux server? Any user is good enough as long as they have sudo permissions. The installation requires the user/password or SSH key. In a multi-node deployment, the same user needs to be defined on all of the servers.
How do I backup and restore the system? Can I use mirror disk? See Recovering the Sisense Environment after a General Failure for information regarding backing up and restoring Sisense.
Does the Linux deployment require a specific CPU feature? Sisense requires that your Linux deployment includes AVX2 which was introduced in Haswell.

.r.