Choosing a hosting option for a Looker (original) instance

You have the option to host your own Looker (original) instance or deployment, or Looker can host it for you. Throughout our documentation, we refer to instances or deployments that are hosted by Looker as "Looker-hosted" and to instances or deployments that are hosted on-premises as "customer-hosted" or "self-hosted."

When Looker hosts your deployment, Looker manages all necessary IT functions that are related to the Looker application on your behalf, based on resource utilization and business requirements, greatly reducing the effort required to install, configure, and maintain the Looker application. Conversely, when you host your own deployment, you are responsible for managing many of these processes and functions. A customer-hosted deployment includes the in-product services, meaning the services that are hosted by Looker and accessible through the product, specifically licensing data, configuration backups, system error reports, data actions, and support tickets, as further described in the Application Data Shared by Looker section of Looker's security page.

Note: A customer-hosted option is offered only for Looker (original) instances. This option is not available for Looker (Google Cloud core) instances.

Choosing between the two hosting options is a trade-off between convenience and control. Opting for Looker-hosted lets you focus on integrating Looker into your business workloads without the demands of infrastructure administration. Conversely, hosting your own Looker deployment gives you complete control over the infrastructure administration, but increases your overhead for the initial launch and ongoing maintenance.

This page presents the following information to assist you in choosing the most appropriate hosting option for your needs:

• Comparative advantages of each hosting option
• Benefits and limits of the Looker-hosted option
• Benefits and limits of the customer-hosted option
• Sample use cases for customer-hosted deployments

Comparative advantages of each hosting option

The following table compares the advantages of each hosting option.

Benefit	Looker-hosted	Customer-hosted
Default access to all Looker features	X
No hardware setup or maintenance required	X
Automatic software updates and maintenance (monthly or quarterly)	X
Scale hardware at no additional cost: Vertical scaling (more CPU) Horizontal scaling (more nodes)	X
Application and host monitoring	X
Automatic Looker instance backups	X
Backend database migration, if necessary	X
Uptime SLA 99.9% (Advanced & Elite)	X
S1 Response SLA 1 hour	X
Use of the Looker API	X	X
Multi-instance migrations	X	X
Direct access to servers and logs		X

Benefits and limits of the Looker-hosted option

The following tables list the benefits and limits of using a Looker-hosted deployment.

Benefits of Looker-hosted deployments

The following table lists the benefits of using a Looker-hosted deployment.

Active management of Looker instance	Leave the performance monitoring to the Looker team and focus on making decisions with actionable data insights from Looker.
Always get the latest features and updates	You will never have to manually download another update. Your Looker instance is tested, updated, and optimized by Looker.
Consistent performance	Looker monitors performance and adjusts capacity as needed. You don't have to decide how many servers you need to support your users.
Deployment security	Looker manages your platform infrastructure. Your Looker deployment is discrete, secure, and monitored continuously to keep your data safe.
Connected services	Every Looker deployment includes essential connected services that allow you to access more relevant data, increase insights, simplify and scale data modeling, and integrate with third-party systems, all while Looker provides support.
Secure database connections	Connect Looker to your database using SSH.
SAML/LDAP integration	Looker can integrate with your existing authentication methods.

Limits of Looker-hosted deployments

Before you opt to use a Looker-hosted deployment, consider the limits that are listed in the following table.

Specific security/compliance requirements	The Looker-hosted environment infrastructure may not align with your company's individual security/compliance requirements.
Requirement to have access to logs/monitoring	Since Looker manages the infrastructure, you won't have access to logs, and Looker will manage all monitoring.
Custom SLAs	Looker updates and maintenance take place during the pre-defined maintenance windows. Some customers may require additional control over when this maintenance occurs.
Custom JDBC Drivers	Custom JDBC drivers must be installed to connect to databases that have lower levels of support.

Benefits and limits of the customer-hosted option

The following tables list the benefits and limits to using a customer-hosted deployment.

Benefits of customer-hosted deployments

The following table lists the benefits of using a customer-hosted deployment.

Direct control over infrastructure and scaling decisions	You are able to implement infrastructure and architecture configurations that may not be offered with a Looker-hosted deployment.
Access to logging/monitoring	By managing your own infrastructure, you can directly access Looker application logs and set up instance monitoring that suits your individual requirements.
Bespoke security model	Hosting Looker in your own deployment allows you complete control over the security of the application environment, which you can align to your company/industry specific security standards.

Limits of customer-hosted deployments

Before you opt to use a customer-hosted deployment, consider the limits that are listed in the following table.

Support limitations	Troubleshooting issues can be challenging when the Looker support team is unfamiliar with custom deployment architecture. Certain issues may require more involvement from your organization.
Monthly update requirements	You are responsible for creating and maintaining processes that ensure that users are getting the latest features and security patches from Looker.
Human capital requirements	Looker deployments can require significant headcount and site reliability engineering expertise. Your organization must manage the various components of a Looker deployment.
Cost	Your organization must manage time, human capital, and cloud/datacenter costs.
Challenges using connected services	Looker has the benefit of connected services, which allow you to to access relevant industry data, increase insights, simplify and scale data modeling, and integrate with third-party systems. In a self-hosted Looker deployment, you may need to deploy ancillary services in your cloud to access these features.
Disaster recovery and elasticity	You will be responsible for maintaining uptime and service resilience.
Some Looker features are not available	The following Looker features are not available for customer-hosted deployments: Looker (Google Cloud core) instances and any features that appear only in Looker (Google Cloud core) BI Connectors Looker Studio. Likewise, the complimentary licenses to use Looker Studio Pro are not available. Connected Sheets for Looker Looker — Power BI Connector Studio in Looker Export — this feature is required to migrate from Looker (original) to Looker (Google Cloud core) IP Allowlist Looker's built-in Slack integration Importing Looker visualizations into Google Slides
Additional feature configuration	Customer-hosted instances may require additional configuration to use certain Looker features.

Sample use cases for customer-hosted deployments

A customer-hosted option may be right for your deployment if it aligns with any of the following use cases:

• Your organization has bespoke security requirements: Some organizations' security policies mandate that they cannot use cloud services. Looker (original) is designed to be multi-cloud, and Looker-hosted Looker (original) deployments reside on various Cloud providers such as Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure. If your security policy is incompatible with using Cloud services with your data, customer-hosting is designed to be the alternative.
• Your organization prefers a fully customizable deployment model: When Looker hosts your environments, Looker assumes that these environments are intended to be stable. Your organization's requirements may not be compatible with this assumption, such as in the following situations:
  • Your deployment landscape is a large expanse of numerous instances for each of your user groups or customers, which may only be required for an ephemeral period.
  • Your organization requires the ability to frequently build new environments or tear down existing environments.
  • Your organization requires multiple Looker instances, each requiring custom configurations for the startup flags, model, or connection information.
• Your organization requires more direct access to integration and configuration capabilities: In a Looker-hosted environment, your direct access to your deployment is limited. Customer-hosted deployments allow for full access to the file system, metadata database, and JVM configurations of your instance. Direct access may be beneficial in the following situations:
  • Your LookML models and configurations for each instance are frequently updated by using scripts that are synchronized with your development process.
  • Your organization is unable to use certain core technologies that Looker uses to deploy, such as Git. With full control of your instance's backend, you can substitute any core component of Looker with your preferred solution.