Tableau Server on Windows Help

Use the tsm maintenance restore command to restore your Tableau Server data. You might do this if you had a system failure and need to restore your data, if you need to switch back to a previous version of Tableau Server (for example, if there is a problem with an upgrade), or if you are moving Tableau Server to new hardware. You can use the tsm maintenance restore command to restore Tableau Server backups created using tabadmin backup and tsm maintenance backup.

Limitations when restoring Tableau Server

• If you perform Blue/Green upgrades or manually upgrade Tableau Server 2021.4 (or earlier) using the tsm maintenance (backup and restore) method, you must enable legacy-identity-mode before you can restore to Tableau Server 2022.1 (or later). For more information, see Troubleshoot Issues with the Identity Migration.

• Database backups made in other ways, and virtual machine snapshots are not valid sources for restoring Tableau Server.

• When you use tsm maintenance restore to restore your Tableau data, data extract files and the contents of the PostgreSQL database are overwritten with the content in the backup file (.tsbak). If you are running a distributed installation of Tableau Server, perform the restore on the node running the TSM Controller (this is usually the initial node).

• You can only restore from a backup that has the same type of identity store as the running server. For example, a backup from a server using local authentication can be restored to a Tableau Server initialized with local authentication, but a backup from a server using Active Directory authentication cannot be restored to a server initialized with local authentication.

• You can only restore a backup file to a version of Tableau Server version that is the same or newer than the version the backup was created on. You cannot restore to an older version of Tableau.

• Beginning with version 2022.3, backups created using tabadmin ("pre-TSM backups") are not supported. You cannot restore a pre-TSM backup to Tableau Server version 2022.3 or later.

• During restore, the restore process will initiate a full re-indexing of the content and external assets managed by Tableau Server. This process consumes CPU resources which may be noticeable during backup and restore.

Restore Tableau Server from a backup file

Note: This operation includes steps that you may need to perform using the TSM command line. To use the TSM CLI you need administrator access to the command line on one of the nodes in your installation and TSM administrator credentials to run TSM commands.

1. (Optional) Copy the .tsbak file to the default file location.

   The restore command expects a backup file in the directory defined in the TSM basefilepath.backuprestore variable. By default:

   C:\ProgramData\Tableau\Tableau Server\data\tabsvc\files\backups\

   For more information about file paths and how to change them, see tsm File Paths.

   Note: If you are restoring a backup that was copied into the backups folder, ensure that the Run As service account, which can be found in TSM Web UI under Security, has at least Read access to the backup file. Otherwise, the restore process may not be able to unzip the backup file and the restore will fail.

2. Stop the server. At a command prompt, type:

   tsm stop

3. Restore from a backup file. At a command prompt, type:

   tsm maintenance restore --file <file_name>

   In the above line, replace <file_name> with the name of the backup file you want to restore from.

4. Restart the server:

   tsm start