Frequently Asked Questions

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The Linux deployment supports both single and multi-server deployments.
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.
See Minimum Requirements for Sisense in Linux Environments for the latest supported flavors.
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 Linux vs. Windows.

Note:

For the list of supported connectors, see Data Source Connectors.


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 does not 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Its 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
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.
See Recovering the Sisense Environment after a General Failure for information regarding backing up and restoring Sisense.
Sisense requires that your Linux deployment includes AVX2 which was introduced in Haswell.