Deploying Sisense on EC2 with Amazon FSx for Lustre

Last updated: October 21, 2026

Tier	Deployment
Enterprise	On-Prem

Amazon FSx for Lustre provides a high-performance file system optimized for fast processing of workloads such as that of Sisense. Using AWS CloudFormation, you can launch a cluster of worker nodes on Amazon EC2, and then launch Sisense onto your cluster.

Prerequisites

Amazon Linux 2 OS (Amazon Linux 2 AMI (HVM), SSD Volume Type)
Installation user with UID 1000 should be named "ec2-user"
The installation user must be a regular (non-root) user with passwordless sudo (NOPASSWD) on the machine that runs sisense.sh and on every EC2 instance in the cluster. On this deployment type, the installer connects to each instance over SSH as this user to prepare the operating system and install RKE2. For details, see Privileges and Permissions for Self-Deployment.
Create an IAM Role based on the following policies and add it to each EC2 instance:
- Select one of the EC2 instances and click Security > Modify IAM role:
- Create an IAM Role based on the following policies:
Create an EBS CSI policy:
1. Log in to the AWS Management Console and open the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/.
2. In the navigation pane on the left, select Policies.
3. Select Create policy.
4. Choose the JSON tab and enter the following JSON policy:
```
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:AttachVolume",
        "ec2:CreateSnapshot",
        "ec2:CreateTags",
        "ec2:CreateVolume",
        "ec2:DeleteSnapshot",
        "ec2:DeleteTags",
        "ec2:DeleteVolume",
        "ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones",
        "ec2:DescribeInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeSnapshots",
        "ec2:DescribeTags",
        "ec2:DescribeVolumes",
        "ec2:DescribeVolumesModifications",
        "ec2:DetachVolume",
        "ec2:ModifyVolume"
        ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}
```
  For details about the IAM policy language, see IAM JSON policy reference.
5. Choose Review policy and the Policy Validator reports any syntax errors.
6. On the Review policy page, enter a Name and an (optional) Description for the policy. It is recommended that the policy name include EBS_CSI so it can be easily identified in the future.
7. Review the policy Summary to see the permissions that are granted by this new policy.
8. Choose Create policy to save the policy.

Add the newly created EBS CSI Policy to the used IAM role.
Create a new Security Group with Inbound port 988 to the node groups.
Allow all inbound traffic within the Security Group for inter node communication.
Based on your configuration and requirements, allow traffic for ssh, https, or http protocols. Note that for http, Sisense uses port 30845 by default.
Tag EC2 instances with Key kubernetes.io/cluster/$cluster_name and set the value to true.
In installer/extra_values/installer/installer-values.yaml, which is stored in the installation directory, set the "ebs_csi" value for "enabled" to true (if it is "false", change it to "true"):

With this setting, the installer installs the AWS EBS CSI driver (if it is not already installed) and creates the StorageClass ebs-sc (GP3, encrypted), which MongoDB and ZooKeeper use for their volumes.

## AWS EBS CSI Drivers.

ebs_csi:

enabled: true

Deploying Sisense

In one of your new instances, enter the following command to download the Sisense tar.gz file.
wget [sisense-linux-deployment-link]
Contact Sisense to receive the latest Linux archive file.
Extracting the tar.gz file:

tar zxf [sisense-linux-deployment-package-name]
Navigate to the directory where you extracted the tar.gz file.

cd sisense-[sisense-version]
Edit the config.yaml file.

vim cluster_config.yaml
After running this command, the parameters of the cluster_config.yaml file are displayed.
In the cluster_config.yaml file, define the following parameters:

storage_type: fsx

## AWS FSX

fsx_dns_name: "<fsx_dns_name>"

fsx_mount_name: "<fsx_mount_name>"

The installer installs the FSx for Lustre CSI driver and creates the aws-fsx StorageClass. Sisense creates a PersistentVolume for your file system, mounted with the flock option. To share one FSx file system between several Sisense namespaces, end fsx_mount_name with a slash (/); each deployment then uses a sub-directory named after its namespace, which the installer creates.

And add a new parameter:

cloud_provider: aws

The node name of each node should be equal to the AWS Private DNS Name of the EC2 instance. For example:

k8s_nodes:

{ node: ip-172-31-6-182.us-west-2.compute.internal, internal_ip: 172.31.6.182, external_ip: 54.187.192.203, disk_volume_device: /dev/sdb, roles: "application, query" }

{ node: ip-172-31-9-110.us-west-2.compute.internal, internal_ip: 172.31.9.110, external_ip: 34.221.225.21, disk_volume_device: /dev/sdb, roles: "application, query" }

{ node: ip-172-31-1-81.us-west-2.compute.internal, internal_ip: 172.31.1.81, external_ip: 35.92.200.132, disk_volume_device: /dev/sdb, roles: "build" }
Run the configuration script.

./sisense.sh cluster_config.yaml
Your configuration settings are displayed with a message to confirm that you want to deploy Sisense with these settings.
Enter Yes to confirm that you want to deploy Sisense. Enter No to abort the deployment. If you entered Yes, Sisense will be deployed. The installer writes its log to sisense-installer.log in the directory you ran ./sisense.sh from, and errors from each installation stage on the cluster servers to installer/<stage>/errors/. If there are any issues, check these files. When this installation is complete, the installer displays the address for accessing Sisense (for a non-secure installation, by default http://<node-address>:30845/). The address is also written to sisense-installer.log.

You can enter this address into your browser to access Sisense. To verify that all your services are running as expected, you can enter the URL of Sisense with the port and /app/test to the end of the address in your browser. This displays the status of each of your services. For example, 0.0.0.0:PORT/app/test.