Introducing

Tableau Services Manager (TSM)

The Benefits 3

New TSM Web UI 4

Server Architecture 5

How Does TSM Work? 6

Installation 7

Hot Topology Changes 8

Backup & Restore 9

Server Upgrades 10

High-Availability 11

Administration Tips 12

Additional Resources 13

Start Your Trial 14

 • Tableau Services Manager (TSM) replaces multiple tools
from previous versions of Tableau Server: Tableau Server
Configuration, tabadmin command line, Tableau Server
Tableau Services Manager (TSM) is the
comprehensive tool for installing and managing Monitor, and Manage License Keys.
Tableau Server. It contains an enhanced user
experience with both a command-line interface (CLI)
and a web interface for server administrators. • Flexibility & Ease of Automation – admins can access the
Previously introduced in Tableau Server for Linux TSM via CLI, Web GUI, or directly hit the REST APIs.
10.5 (CLI Only), with the 2018.2 release it is now
available for both Linux and Windows as a web
interface, command-line interface (CLI) and a REST • No more primary + worker(s) – All nodes in a cluster are
API. Both the CLI and Web UI interact with the new
TSM REST API.
peers; backup primary is no longer required for HA.

TSM includes a new distributed architecture that

addresses key customer pain points such • Hot Topology – Ability to adjust VizQL Server and
as eliminating the need for a dedicated backup Backgrounder processes without requiring a restart.
primary machine. It also adds the ability to
dynamically add/remove certain server processes
without restarting server.
• Faster Upgrades – new upgrade paradigm minimizes
TSM is designed from the ground up to be a flexible downtime during an upgrade.
and extensible Java-based platform that will allow us
to innovate and add capabilities more rapidly in the
future.
With the new TSM web interface, you can quickly check the status of your Tableau Server and configure Tableau Server processes – all
without logging into the server itself.

Easily configure Run As service account, enable and configure external SSL, and enable and configure repository (internal) SSL,
configure Tableau Server to send email notifications about critical events, processes and server health.

Centrally view and manage of Tableau Server licenses, review expiration dates, and activate or deactivate product keys.
 Tableau Server
TSM Processes
TSM consists of multiple administrative Service Manager Application Processes
processes which manage Tableau Server.

REST API
The six main TSM processes are Controller, Controller
Coordination Services, Agent, Licensing, Client File Backgrounder Gateway
Service, and Service Manager (highlighted in navy
blue). These processes run continuously after TSM is
initialized, even when the rest of Tableau Server is Coordination
offline.
Repository Data Engine
Service
The TSM Services interact with the Application
Processes (highlighted in teal) to start, stop, restart, VizQL Server FileStore
configure, and check status of the individual Agent
processes running on Tableau Server.
Licensing Application
In additional to the always running TSM processes, Data Server
Service Server
there are also three new maintenance processes:
Backup/Restore, DB Maintenance, and Site
Import/Export (highlighted in orange). These Client File
processes are usually stopped unless performing Service Repository
maintenance tasks such as Taking a Backup or
Restoring a Backup.
Backup/Restore DB Maintenance Site Import/Export
For more information, see Tableau Server Processes.
TSM Maintenance Processes
 TSM CLI TSM Web UI Custom REST
Clients/Automation

Tableau Server
TSM Processes
Clients such as the TSM Web UI, CLI, or custom Service Manager Application Processes
automation written by Server Administrators connect
via the REST API to the Controller which is the

REST API
“brains” of the TSM services. Controller
Backgrounder Gateway
Controller will orchestrate the configuration and
topology changes. These changes are persisted and
stored in the Coordination Service which serves as Coordination
the single source of truth across the system. For this
Repository Data Engine
Service
reason, it is critical to Coordination Service to be
redundant and maintain quorum for High Availability
(HA). VizQL Server FileStore
Agent
Agent which runs on each node of the cluster will
monitor the Coordination Service for changes and Application
delivers these new configurations or deploy/remove
Licensing Data Server
Service Server
processes. The Agent also monitors the individual
processes for status and reports this to the
Coordination Service. Client File
Service Repository

Backup/Restore DB Maintenance Site Import/Export

TSM Maintenance Processes
Installing Tableau Server with TSM is easy as 1-2-3!
Whether you are doing a single-node installation or
distributed installation, you just have a single installer to
download.

1. Download the latest 2018.2 Tableau Server installer

from the following URL:
https://www.tableau.com/support/releases/server/

2. Launch the installer and follow the prompts to install

the bits

3. Login to TSM using your local administrator account

(Windows) or member of the tsmadmin group (Linux)
and complete the initialization process. This process
will take you through registering, activating and
configuring Tableau Server.

You will follow these same steps to install Tableau Server

on additional nodes to created a distributed installation.
With TSM, you can add and remove Backgrounder
and VizQL processes on Tableau Server dynamically.
This can be useful for adjusting the capacity of the
server to handle different workloads with the same
set of resources.

For example, you can add more VizQL Server

processes to handle higher viz load and interaction
activities during your core business hours. During
the off hours, you can add more Backgrounder
processes to get through the scheduled extract
refresh jobs faster. This can all be done without
restarting Tableau Server, so your users can continue
to use Tableau Server without interruption.

The hot topology changes can be made manually

through the TSM Web UI or CLI. The changes can
also be be scripted and scheduled to run
automatically.
 Taking a backup

With TSM, you have more control over what Tableau Server data is
backed-up/restored. With this comes a few changes from previous
releases.

There are 3 types of data that you will need to backup:

1. Repository data such as workbook and user metadata, extract
files, etc. This data is backed up with the tsm maintenance
backup command.
2. Configuration and Topology data which can be saved using the
tsm settings export command. Restoring a backup
3. Configuration Files including customized logos, certificate files,
key files, and keytab files which must be manually backed-up.

To restore, you just need to run the corresponding commands to restore

this data (tsm maintenance restore and tsm settings import).

Also, don’t forget to take a backup, export your settings, and save all
your files as a precaution prior to upgrading to a new version! This is a
recommended best practice in care you hit any issues with the upgrade
or need to go back to the previous version.

Learn more about Performing Backup and Restore on TSM.

When upgrading to 2018.2, from a prior version, you
will uninstall first, then install 2018.2 on each node
individually. As a final step to initialize TSM, you will
run an upgrade script to complete the upgrade.

For subsequent versions, TSM introduces a new way

to do upgrades of Tableau Server. You can run the
new TSM installer to lay down the bits on to the
Tableau Server nodes ahead of time while Tableau
Server is running. Then, when you are ready to
proceed with the upgrade, you can just run the
upgrade script to complete the upgrade process; this
is the only part of the upgrade process that will
require taking downtime.

On one of our own internal 5-nodes clusters, an

upgrade that use to required 75 minutes of downtime
could now be completed in about 15 minutes with
TSM.

Upgrading to TSM.
High-Availability Configurations
Before TSM With TSM
ELB ELB

Note: You must manually add a Coordination Service

Ensemble to your distributed cluster to achieve HA.

3-node minimum + backup primary 3-node minimum

An HA installation of Tableau Server has a minimum of three nodes and multiple instances of key processes (the Repository, File
Store/Data Engine (Hyper), and Coordination Service) on different computers. With an HA installation, there is built-in redundancy of
those key processes. The goal is to minimize system downtime by eliminating single points of failure, and enabling detection of failures
with failover where possible. There are two processes that which can only run on one of the nodes on the server at any time, the License
service (License Manager) and TSM Controller (Administration Controller). In the case of a failure of the node where these two
processes are running, they can me moved to another node in the cluster.

Learn more about Distributed and High Availability Tableau Server Installations.
 here

here

here

here
• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/tsm_overview.htm

• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/tabadmin-to-tsm.htm

• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/tabadmin_to_tsm_cli.htm
 https://www.tableau.com/products/trial

Tableau Services Manager is the comprehensive tool

for installing and managing Tableau Server. It
contains an enhanced user experience for both a
command-line interface (CLI) and a web interface for
server administrators.

If you’re not using Tableau Server already, start your

trial of Tableau Server or Tableau Online with
Tableau Prep and Tableau Desktop today to
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and Published Data Sources.

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