Alteryx Server Administration Best Practices

[caltang]

Hi all!

I'm beginning to take charge of Server Administration soon. My experience has mostly been on the UAT Server side, and we're launching a Prod Server soon. 

I'd like to know if there are any documentation or best practices that the community would like to share here. I want to know how to better manage and improve our Server experience for our end users. 

Share your stories in your teams - all advice is welcomed! 😁

[fmvizcaino · Accepted solution]

Hi @caltang ,

I would say this document is a good start: https://www.alteryx.com/resources/whitepaper/server-deployment-best-practices?thanks=true

Other things I can think of:

1. Understand everything about Server Upgrade. When to do a 2-step upgrade, pre-upgrade checks, MongoDB versions
   1. https://help.alteryx.com/20221/server/install-or-upgrade-server
   2. https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Knowledge-Base/Alteryx-Server-Pre-Upgrade-Checks/ta-...
2. Create an automated backup process. Scheduled Server Snapshots as well
   1. https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Knowledge-Base/Alteryx-Server-Backup-and-Recovery-Pa...
3. Create an internal process for workflow migration from UAT to PROD
   
   1. API-based migration: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Community-Gallery/Alteryx-Gallery-Workflow-Migration/ta-p/1031739
      1. Be aware of Gallery Data Connections when using the API-based solution
         1. https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Discussions/Migrating-Workflow-handling-Alias-Betwee...
         2. https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Knowledge-Base/Troubleshooting-quot-Unable-to-transl...
   2. Create a document with checks that must be done prior to moving to PROD. For example, optimization, documentation, shared folder usage, data connections, etc..
4. Try leveraging the Alteryx Server Usage Report (being deprecated as of 22.3). The data is all there and you have a PDF or TAbleau workbook as your starting point, but I would create something to manage better the Users, Schedules/Jobs, Queue, Collections, etc.
5. Be mindful of your MongoDB size:
   1. https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Knowledge-Base/How-to-shrink-the-size-of-the-embedde...
6. Learn more about Logs and how to identify errors:
   1. https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Server-Knowledge-Base/How-To-Read-Alteryx-Server-Logs/ta-p/...
7. Gallery
   1. Use user groups to manage collections and data connections together.
   2. Based on the usage report, perform a cleaning process of schedules not being used, deleting or moving workflows from users that left the company.
   3. Based on the usage report, evaluate users that need training or that are misusing the server.
   4. Naming convention for Collections and Workflows

That is all I can remember for now. Hope it is helpful.

Best,

Fernando Vizcaino

[caltang]

Thanks @fmvizcaino !

[jonlipke]

Thank you for sharing this!  I'm currently trying to figure out the Workflow Migration from Dev to Prod on my end.  I got it work, but I'm running into a couple of items that I'd like to fix.

1) Workflow is migrated to my workspace, and not the same collection.

2) Workflows are being migrated as new workflows in Production.  When I run the workflow migration on the same "ready to be migrated" workflow, it is migrated as a new workflow with a new workflow ID.

3) The owner ID is static.  I'm going research how to make this dynamic, but I am curious if anyone came across this.

Have you all run into the same issues?  I'm going to focus on 2) and 3) first, but I thought I share in case someone ran into this and figured it out.

Thanks!

Jon