# Installing Sisense on a Multi-Node Cluster with EFS as the Shared Storage

> How to install Sisense on a multinode cluster with EFS as the shared storage.

*Source: https://docs.sisense.com/main/SisenseLinux/installing-sisense-on-multinode-cluster-with-efs.htm*

---

Last updated: June 10, 2026

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| [Tier](https://www.sisense.com/pricing/#pricing) | [Deployment](https://docs.sisense.com/main/SisenseLinux/introduction-to-sisense-cloud-managed-services.md#ComparisonofManagedCloudandSelfHosted) |
| Enterprise | On-Prem |

You can deploy Sisense and Kubernetes (RKE2) on a multi-node EC2 instance with AWS EFS as the shared storage.

## Prerequisites

### Architecture

- Amazon EKS
- Amazon EC2
- Elastic File System (EFS)

### Requirements

- Minimum of 3 nodes in the same region and same VPC
- 8 cores
- 32 GB RAM
- Amazon Linux AMI 2023 OS (Amazon Linux 2023 AMI (HVM), SSD Volume)

Tag EC2 instances with `kubernetes.io/cluster/$cluster_name` (replace cluster\_name with a unique value) key and value `true`.

Note:

If you did not provide the tags during the instance creation, and you receive an error "Failed to update tags", right-click the instance > **Instance Settings** > **Allow Tags in Instance Metadata** > clear the checkbox.

![K8s cluster tags](https://docs.sisense.com/main/Resources/Images/k8s-cluster-tags.png)

## Creating an IAM Role

Before installation, you must create an IAM role. In the following example the name is `EFS_ROLE_FOR_EC2`.

The role must contain the following 2 IAM policies:

- AmazonEFSCSIDriverPolicy
- AmazonEBSCSIDriverPolicy

Alternatively, you can create a custom policy with the following permissions:

[Copy](javascript:void(0);)

```
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{  
  "Version": "2012-10-17",  
  "Statement": [  
    {  
      "Sid": "AllowDescribe",  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "elasticfilesystem:DescribeAccessPoints",  
        "elasticfilesystem:DescribeFileSystems",  
        "elasticfilesystem:DescribeMountTargets",  
        "ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "*"  
    },  
    {  
      "Sid": "AllowCreateAccessPoint",  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "elasticfilesystem:CreateAccessPoint"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "Null": {  
          "aws:RequestTag/efs.csi.aws.com/cluster": "false"  
        },  
        "ForAllValues:StringEquals": {  
          "aws:TagKeys": "efs.csi.aws.com/cluster"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Sid": "AllowTagNewAccessPoints",  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "elasticfilesystem:TagResource"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringEquals": {  
          "elasticfilesystem:CreateAction": "CreateAccessPoint"  
        },  
        "Null": {  
          "aws:RequestTag/efs.csi.aws.com/cluster": "false"  
        },  
        "ForAllValues:StringEquals": {  
          "aws:TagKeys": "efs.csi.aws.com/cluster"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Sid": "AllowDeleteAccessPoint",  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": "elasticfilesystem:DeleteAccessPoint",  
      "Resource": "*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "Null": {  
          "aws:ResourceTag/efs.csi.aws.com/cluster": "false"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones",  
        "ec2:DescribeInstances",  
        "ec2:DescribeInstanceTypes",  
        "ec2:DescribeSnapshots",  
        "ec2:DescribeTags",  
        "ec2:DescribeVolumes",  
        "ec2:DescribeVolumesModifications",  
        "ec2:DescribeVolumeStatus"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "*"  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:CreateSnapshot",  
        "ec2:ModifyVolume"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/*"  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:CopyVolumes"  
      ],  
      "Resource": [  
        "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/vol-*"  
      ]  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:AttachVolume",  
        "ec2:DetachVolume"  
      ],  
      "Resource": [  
        "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/*",  
        "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:instance/*"  
      ]  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:CreateVolume",  
        "ec2:EnableFastSnapshotRestores"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:snapshot/*"  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:CreateTags"  
      ],  
      "Resource": [  
        "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/*",  
        "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:snapshot/*"  
      ],  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringEquals": {  
          "ec2:CreateAction": [  
            "CreateVolume",  
            "CreateSnapshot",  
            "CopyVolumes"  
          ]  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:DeleteTags"  
      ],  
      "Resource": [  
        "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/*",  
        "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:snapshot/*"  
      ]  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:CreateVolume",  
        "ec2:CopyVolumes"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringLike": {  
          "aws:RequestTag/ebs.csi.aws.com/cluster": "true"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:CreateVolume",  
        "ec2:CopyVolumes"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringLike": {  
          "aws:RequestTag/CSIVolumeName": "*"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:DeleteVolume"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringLike": {  
          "ec2:ResourceTag/ebs.csi.aws.com/cluster": "true"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:DeleteVolume"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringLike": {  
          "ec2:ResourceTag/CSIVolumeName": "*"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:DeleteVolume"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:volume/*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringLike": {  
          "ec2:ResourceTag/kubernetes.io/created-for/pvc/name": "*"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:CreateSnapshot"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:snapshot/*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringLike": {  
          "aws:RequestTag/CSIVolumeSnapshotName": "*"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:CreateSnapshot"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:snapshot/*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringLike": {  
          "aws:RequestTag/ebs.csi.aws.com/cluster": "true"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:DeleteSnapshot",  
        "ec2:LockSnapshot"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:snapshot/*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringLike": {  
          "ec2:ResourceTag/CSIVolumeSnapshotName": "*"  
        }  
      }  
    },  
    {  
      "Effect": "Allow",  
      "Action": [  
        "ec2:DeleteSnapshot",  
        "ec2:LockSnapshot"  
      ],  
      "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:snapshot/*",  
      "Condition": {  
        "StringLike": {  
          "ec2:ResourceTag/ebs.csi.aws.com/cluster": "true"  
        }  
      }  
    }  
  ]  
}
```

After this role is created and has been attached with these polices, attach the IAM Role to the EC2 instances:

1. For each of the EC2 instances, click the instance **> Instance Settings > Attach/Replace IAM Role**.

![EFS attach IAM role](https://docs.sisense.com/main/Resources/Images/EFS-attach-IAM-role.png)

2. Select the role (**EFS\_ROLE\_FOR\_EC2**) and click **Apply**.
3. Create a security group for the nodes with an inbound rule opened for port **2049**.
4. Verify that the following rules were added to the security group:

   - UI access to Sisense application (if it is port 30845/443/80, or other)
   - Inter-node communication: Allow all traffic for EC2 instances using this security group - add the security group ID and your VPC CIDR(s) to the rule
   - SSH access
   - VPC CIDR access for the EFS port (2049)

     ![Vpc cidr access for efs port](https://docs.sisense.com/main/Resources/Images/vpc-cidr-access-for-efs-port.png)

   **Note:**

   Make sure to attach this security group to all nodes.
5. On the newly-created EFS, ensure the following:

   1. Choose EFS file system name.
   2. Choose the same VPC as the nodes.
   3. Choose **Availability Regional**.
6. Once the EFS has been created, open **Network > Manage** and replace all security groups listed with your new security group.

   ![Availability zone](https://docs.sisense.com/main/Resources/Images/availability-zone.png)

## Installing Sisense

1. Download a Sisense version package:

   `wget $sisense_url`
2. Extract the Sisense package:

   `tar zxf $package_name`
3. Open the Sisense directory:

   `cd sisense-$sisense_version`
4. Edit the Sisense configuration file:

   `vim cluster_config.yaml`
5. Edit the Sisense configuration file as follows:

   - Ensure node names are AWS private DNS names.
   - Update the internal and external IP addresses.
   - Add the `cloud_provider` field to the configuration file and set the value to **aws**.
   - In the `storage_type` field, enter **efs**.
   - Enter values for `efs_file_system_id` and `efs_aws_region`.
   - Configure disk sizes.

   **Example**:

   [Copy](javascript:void(0);)

   ```
   ## Replace node name with Private DNS of the EC2  
     
   k8s_nodes:   
     - { node: ip-192-168-30-30.us-east-2.compute.internal, internal_ip: 172.31.46.87, external_ip: 18.220.40.103, disk_volume_device: /dev/sdb, roles: "application, query" }  
     - { node: ip-192-168-30-31.us-east-2.compute.internal, internal_ip: 172.31.46.88, external_ip: 18.220.40.104, disk_volume_device: /dev/sdb, roles: "application, query" }  
     - { node: ip-192-168-30-32.us-east-2.compute.internal, internal_ip: 172.31.46.89, external_ip: 18.220.40.105, disk_volume_device: /dev/sdb, roles: "build" }  
     
   storage_type: efs  
     
   # This is a MUST  
   cloud_provider: aws  
     
   ## AWS EFS  
   # Example  
   # efs_file_system_id: fs-a1b2c3d4e5  
   efs_file_system_id: "<efs_file_system_id>"  
   efs_aws_region: "<efs_aws_region>"  
     
   sisense_disk_size: 10  
   mongodb_disk_size: 3  
   zookeeper_disk_size: 1
   ```
6. Run the installation:

   `./sisense.sh cluster_config.yaml`

Once the installation is complete you can activate and log in to your Sisense app.

[Copy](javascript:void(0);)

```
Sisense intallation process completed successfuly.  
The app is accessible on address: http://18.220.40.103:30845  
  
    In order to access Sisense CLI and Completion file, you can execute:  
    $ kubectl get cm --namespace sisense add-completion -ojsonpath='{.data.*}' > add_completion-sisense.sh  
    $ source add_completion-sisense.sh  
  
Skipping activation  
  
[2026-05-28 12:01:52] Waiting for validator results ...  
[2026-05-28 12:01:52] Waiting for validator job validator-1 to complete (timeout: 1200s)...  
[2026-05-28 12:01:53] Validator completed.  
[2026-05-28 12:01:53] Sisense installation completed.
```