Seeking Ideas for Alteryx Server Learning

[BS_THE_ANALYST]

Hi everyone,

I want to improve my skills with Alteryx Server, and I’m looking for something similar to the Alteryx Designer Weekly Challenges but focused on Server.

For example, I’m curious if anyone has ideas on how to create a hypothetical server that has issues with upgrades, which would require learners to tackle common challenges. How can we design such a fictitious server for educational purposes?

If you have any suggestions for learning resources or challenges, please share them with me. 

Thank you!

[gawa · Accepted solution]

Not sure if this is answering to your question but here is what I'm doing as Server admin in terms of learning and mentoring:

(1) Create Our Own Server Admin Manual

Difficulty of learning Server underlies the fact that troublesome/headache on Server totally depend on specific character of environment where Server is deployed. While online official manual on Server describes its functionality in detail, it does not give 'best practice' for admin to make decision. 

I'm creating our own manual as per lifecycle of Server; (1)Deployment, (2)Operation, (3)Maintenance. This will help new admins to easily locate the resource they need according to their question and guide what kind of consideration is needed before starting work.

(2) Recording Upgrade Work

As you mention, upgrading is one of the tough work for admin. I started recording of all process of upgrading, put some captions in it, and save its video in the above said manual for reference to others.

In our experience, from 2021.3 to 2022.3, it had to involve some additional process for DB migration that were not described in procedure.

From 2022.3 to 2023.2, I just had to follow manual and found no tricky things.

Having said that, I still feels a couple of challenges:

(1) Knowledge on Server is not frequently discussed or shared in User Group Meeting, although I'm very sure that most of Server admins are facing the similar issues. 

(2) There are too many knowledge that can be obtained only through the experience of individuals. When finishing trouble shooting, I sometimes find myself wondering 'How can I write down about trouble shooting this time? What I did for rectification can be a generalized feedback? Or it just happened?". And after a while, my experience will persist in only my brain, forever. 

I want hear how other Serve admins are getting along with it. Looking forward to it!

[fmvizcaino · Accepted solution]

Hi @BS_THE_ANALYST ,

Recreating the issues is not that simple since sometimes we know how to solve, but we have no idea how they happened 😅

A long time ago, I was developing an Alteryx Server course to help new consultants in our company but it was mainly based on recordings available on our internal network, Alteryx KBs and some exercises to get your hands dirty. But it is not that simple to offer this externally because some of the topics are super specific or too difficult to transform into an easy-to-understand exercise.

Considering the basics are already covered, like the entire user and admin interface, backup and recovery, APIs, single node simple installation.

Here is a list of things to tackle:

1. SAML: Very important to feel comfortable with this kind of installation. A long time ago (not sure if still possible), getting an OKTA trial and connecting to your server was possible. This would help you recreate SAML issues (look for the KBs related to SAML issues - the issues are 'easy' to recreate)
2. SSL Certificate: You can play around with OpenSSL and create your own cert, but I would also go with a CA cert and a paid domain so you can learn how to set up by yourself.
   1. I think I paid 50 USD for an SSL cert and 5 USD for a domain
3. Host Recovery process: Cloning an Alteryx Server is also super important. The Alteryx documentation is very rich in detail and the level of complexity is determined by your server, like having a run as user, smtp config, etc
4. Server Upgrade: The most common issues are found inside the pre-upgrade checks and those are simple enough to recreate
   1. I have done more than 50 upgrades and I`d say 80% of times, you won`t have any issues if you follow the step-by-step provided by Alteryx, 10% you will find on Alteryx KBs, and 10% you will have no idea how to solve, will feel bad about it and will have to reach out to Support.

Here are some issues that you will probably be able to reproduce and some topics that you need to know:

1. Server unreachable from outside the server - Open ports

2. Server unreachable from inside the server - depending on your windows server, you will get this error (very common)

https://knowledge.alteryx.com/index/s/article/Cannot-Access-Gallery-from-Server-machine-158346163904...

3. User with no last name - this will make the upgrade fail - preupgrade checks (https://knowledge.alteryx.com/index/s/article/server-pre-upgrade-checks)

4. Any KB related to SSL issues

5. Know when and how to reindex your MongoDB

6. Know how to delete the locks and why

Not sure if this is what you were looking for, and apologies for the confusion in the post. As I get older, I get tired of reviewing the things I write 😅

Best,

Fernando Vizcaino

[BS_THE_ANALYST]

@gawa thank you for your input, that's given me a good amount to think about on how I can benefit the business internally. Recording Server Upgrade is a great shout & I love the idea of having an Admin Server Manual. Thanks for that. 

@fmvizcaino your answer provides lots of what I'm looking for. There's loads of common use cases there and will give me plenty to get started. Thanks for your advice.

It's clear that it's not easy just to have a "Weekly Challenge" for the Server. I'll feedback any ideas I have though. I'd love to promote more engagement and fluency with Server. It does seem a little overwhelming when getting started.