Customer-hosted installation steps

This page explains how to install the Looker application for customers who are hosting an on-premises Looker deployment. Throughout our documentation, we refer to these as "customer-hosted" deployments.

We also offer the option for Looker to host your Looker deployment. Throughout our documentation we refer to these as "Looker-hosted" deployments. Using a Looker-hosted instance greatly reduces the effort required to install, configure, and maintain the Looker application, because Looker handles all necessary IT functions that are related to the Looker application for you.

Note: Hosting the Looker application is independent of where your data resides; data always remains in-database and is not copied to the Looker instance. Some Looker features are not available for customer-hosted deployments, or they may require additional configuration or software. To learn more about feature differences between the two hosted options, see the Choosing a hosting option for a Looker (original) instance documentation page.

Complete the following steps:

1. Install Looker:

   • Add Looker to your server.

   • Configure Looker startup options.

   • Configure your SSL certificate for proper HTTPS.

   • Consider port forwarding for a cleaner URL.

   • Allow Looker support to access your instance.

   • Set up Looker monitoring.

   • Set up a MySQL backend database.

   Note: We recommend that all new customer-hosted instances set up a MySQL backend database rather than use the default HyperSQL database.

   • Set up Looker backups.

   • Ensure that Looker can access necessary services.

   • Install rendering software.

   • Determine if your Looker instance can accommodate the Looker Action Hub.

2. Enable secure database access.

3. Configure your database for Looker.

4. Connect Looker to your database.

5. Test your database connectivity.

6. Configure Looker sign-in options.

Once your instance is set up, you're ready to get started with development.

Features that require additional configuration

The following Looker features require additional configuration or software to use:

Feature	Additional configuration or alternative
Paper Size	Install Chromium renderer
Expand tables
Sending, scheduling, downloading: Dashboards in PDF or Visualization format Looks in Visualization or HTML format Explores in PNG (Image of Visualization) or HTML format
Downloading custom visualizations
Maintenance tasks: Updating an instance to a new Looker release Auto-provisioning a new Looker instance Moving to a new host Clustering Configuration management Java memory settings Archiving log files Restoring backups Migrating Looker backend database to MySQL Migrating to AES-256 encryption Changing Looker's encryption keys Enabling Redis cache	Self-manage
Elite System Activity	Set up a read replica of the Looker backend database
Looker Action Hub	To address the potential issue of the Looker Action Hub not being able to communicate with the Looker instance, Looker admins can implement one of the following solutions. The appropriate solution or combination of solutions will depend on the architecture of the Looker instance: Enable the public_host_url license feature Allowlist the egress IP address for the Looker Action Hub Set up a customer-hosted action hub server
Unpackaged JDBC drivers	Install JDBC driver
Load Assets from CDN	Enable the Load Assets from CDN admin setting to load assets from the CDN
Enabling secure database access	If your customer-hosted Looker instance is not on the same private network as its connected database, be sure to secure your data as well, perhaps using one of the following options: Configure an IP address allowlist. Add to the allowlist the IP address or addresses where your Looker instance is hosted Configure SSL encryption Configure an SSH tunnel
Create a backup of a Looker instance	Generate a keystore-independent backup
Installing tools from the Looker Marketplace	Set up a shared (network) file system
Auto Install assets from the Looker Marketplace / API Explorer	If you are installing the API Explorer on a customer-hosted Looker instance, for users to view API examples, the server running the Looker instance must be configured to access the public internet server running at the URL https://githubusercontent.com.
Upgrading from OpenJDK 8 to OpenJDK 11	Manual upgrade
Allowing Looker Support to access a customer-hosted deployment	Allowlist the IP address for Looker Support