Tableau Desktop on Amazon AppStream 2.0
Publication date: November 11, 2021 (Document history)
This guide provides best practices for deploying Tableau Desktop to Amazon AppStream 2.0 as well as instructions to launch and configure the AppStream 2.0 resources needed for this use case.
What is Amazon AppStream 2.0?
Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed, non-persistent desktop and application virtualization service for securely accessing the data, applications, and resources users need, anywhere, anytime, from any supported device. With AppStream 2.0, you can scale your applications and desktops to any number of users across the globe without acquiring, provisioning, and operating hardware or infrastructure.
AppStream 2.0 is built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), so you benefit from a data center and network architecture designed for the most security-sensitive organizations. Each user has a fluid and responsive experience because your applications run on virtual machines optimized for specific use cases, and each streaming session automatically adjusts to network conditions.
How does AppStream 2.0 fit with Tableau?
Using AppStream 2.0, you provide access to Tableau’s desktop-based products through a web browser instead of requiring users to install applications like Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep Builder, and the Content Migration Tool on their local desktop.
Tableau Desktop
Tableau Server already has web-edit capabilities, but a gap exists between the features available in web-edit compared to Tableau Desktop. If you want to provide the full Tableau Desktop experience to your content creators but want to avoid installing software on workstations, AppStream 2.0 is designed to provide a solution.
Tableau Prep Builder
If you are running the Tableau Server 2020.4 pre-release and later versions, you can create and edit Tableau Prep flows through your web browser. If you are running an older version of Tableau Server, you can stream the application with AppStream 2.0 to provide Prep Builder functionality to your users without local installation.
Content Migration Tool
The Content Migration Tool is a Windows-only desktop application, so macOS users need virtualization software like VMware or Parallels to run it. You can use AppStream 2.0 to simplify deployment of the tool.
Data residency
The previous use cases center on operating systems and features, but what if access to
the data itself is the challenge? For example, what if your data must live in the AWS
eu-west-1 Region, but your content creators work outside of that Region?
Using AppStream 2.0, content creators can work with the data without the need to bring it
down to Tableau Desktop on their machines.
If Tableau Desktop is running within AWS and delivered to users through AppStream
2.0, your data can remain centralized, and applications can interact with data stored in
Amazon Simple Storage Service
