Looker customers can opt to have Looker host their instance or to self-host an on-premises Looker deployment. Throughout our documentation, we refer to instances that are hosted by Looker as "Looker-hosted" and to instances that are hosted on-premises as "customer-hosted" or "self-hosted."
This page outlines the documentation on setting up and administering the Looker application.
Looker-hosted instances
The following pages describe how to install and configure Looker-hosted instances:
- Looker-hosted installation steps: View a list of Looker-hosted installation steps and resources for each step.
Customer-hosted instances
The following pages describe how to install, configure, and maintain customer-hosted instances:
- Customer-hosted installation steps: View a list of customer-hosted installation steps and resources for each step.
- Managing a customer-hosted deployment: View a list of resources about managing your own Looker instance.
- Customer-hosted component infrastructure walkthroughs: Explore common practices for specific components of customer-hosted Looker architecture and how to configure them within a deployment.
- Customer-hosted infrastructure architecture patterns: Explore the most common architecture patterns for a customer-hosted deployment and describes the best practices for implementing them.
Setting up a database connection
The following pages help you understand how to connect to a database:
- Enabling secure database access: Take the first step in connecting a database: Choose an option to secure data between Looker and your database.
- Database configuration instructions: View links for database-specific instructions for configuring your database to work with Looker.
- Connecting Looker to your database: Learn how to connect your database and Looker.
- Testing database connectivity: Test and troubleshoot the connection to your database.
Administrative tutorials
The following pages describe a variety of topics relating to the administration of a Looker instance:
- Supported browsers: View a list of the browsers that Looker supports.
- Configuring sign-in options for users: Configure sign-in options for your users.
- Access control and permission management: Learn how to configure roles, permission sets, and model sets to manage user and group access to your data and to Looker features.
- Designing and configuring a system of access levels: Learn about different ways you can configure Looker to manage user and group access to saved Looks and dashboards.
- Clustering Looker: Learn how to create a clustered Looker configuration.
- Creating connections: Get an overview of the process to connect Looker to your database.
- Creating Looker usage and metadata reports with i__looker: Learn how to create reports from Looker's internal database, called
i__looker, to view information and history about your Looker instance. - Creating Looker usage reports with System Activity Explores: Learn how to use Looker's new System Activity reports to view information and history about your Looker instance.
- Making announcements to your users: Learn how to configure Looker's sidebar to create personalized messages to your users on your homepage.
- Managing business user features: Learn about administrative settings that affect options for viewing, retrieving, and sharing data.
- Deleting personal user information: Learn how to remove all of a disabled or deleted user's personal information from their Looker account.
- Using time zone settings: Learn about Looker's various time zone settings and how they interact to convert time-based data.
- Supported user-interface languages: Learn about managing user-interface localization, letting you display data and Looker menus in multiple international languages.
- Localizing number formatting: Learn about managing localized number formatting in Looker.
Administrative panels
The following pages describe Looker's administration functions:
- General pages: View a list of pages about setting system-wide options, enabling or disabling beta and legacy features, creating a custom help page for your users, setting a default homepage for your instance or for a user or group, and customizing the welcome emails new users receive.
- System Activity pages: View information about the System Activity dashboards, which show user activity, content activity, and performance data for your Looker instance.
- Users pages: View a list of pages about configuring users, groups, roles, and user attributes; managing user and group access to saved content; and viewing and resetting locked user accounts.
- Database pages: View a list of pages about configured database connections, database query history, persistent derived tables, and datagroups.
- Alerts & Schedules pages: View a list of pages about managing user alerts and schedules, viewing alert and schedule histories, specifying an emailed data policy, and monitoring data sent to external email addresses.
- Platform pages: View a list of pages about setting system-wide options for integrated services, Looker's API, embedded content, email deliveries, and custom visualization types.
- Authentication pages: View a list of pages about configuring authentication methods — including passwords, two-factor authentication, Google OAuth, LDAP, SAML, and OpenID Connect — and configuring options for user to stay logged in to Looker.
- Server pages: View a list of pages about configuring Looker backups, configuring a list of IP addresses that can access your instance, viewing the internal Looker log, and viewing Looker usage information.
Security
The following page helps you understand Looker's security practices:
- Our shared security partnership: View Looker's security posture and best practices.