Tableau Server on Windows Help

Use the following procedure to migrate Tableau Server from one computer to another. You might do this if you are upgrading the computer hardware that Tableau is running on.

Specifically, these steps describe how to move Tableau Server data from your in-production computer to a new computer where Tableau Server is installed. Before you start, make sure you have followed the steps in Preparing for Upgrade, including creating a backup and gathering any assets that require manual actions. For details, see Perform a Full Backup and Restore of Tableau Server. You'll need these to restore your Tableau Server data and configuration.

Important: 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.

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.

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. Deactivate your product key on your original installation of Tableau Server. You need to do this so you can activate it on the new computer. For more information, see "Tableau Server product key activation" below.

2. Install Tableau Server on the new computer, activate your license, configure initial settings, and create your admin user. For details, see Install and Configure Tableau Server.

3. Copy your backup file .tsbak to the folder location specified by the basefilepath.backuprestore variable. By default this is: C:\ProgramData\Tableau\Tableau Server\data\tabsvc\files\backups\.

   Note: You can change the location for the backup file. For more information, see tsm File Paths.

4. Next, stop Tableau Server:

   tsm stop

5. Restore your in-production data to your new Tableau Server installation using the tsm maintenance restore command:

   tsm maintenance restore -f <filename>

   where <filename> is the name of the .tsbak file you copied in step 3.

   For more information about restoring Tableau Server data, see Restore from a Backup.

6. Start the server:

   tsm start

7. Distributed installations only: Install Tableau Server on the new computers you want to add to your new Tableau Server cluster. See Install and Configure Additional Nodes for steps.

8. If you have not deactivated your product key on the old computer, do that after you test your new Tableau Server installation and confirm that it's ready for production. For details, see "Tableau Server product key activation" below.

   Note: If you do not have an internet connection, you are prompted to create an offline activation file to complete the deactivation process. See Activate Tableau Server Offline for steps.

Tableau Server product key activation

You can activate the same Tableau Server product key up to three times. This allows you to test Tableau Server (in a sandbox or QA environments, for example), as well as use Tableau in production. To maximize your activations, you should deactivate your product key when you remove Tableau Server from a computer, unless you will be reinstalling Tableau on the same computer. Doing this gives you the opportunity to use the activation on a different computer. For example, if you move Tableau Server from one computer or VM to another, deactivate the product key, then remove Tableau from the original computer. When you install Tableau on the new computer, you can activate the key there without any conflict. If you use role-based licensing, be sure to activate a Creator or Explorer key or you may lose administrator access to Tableau. If you are removing Tableau Server to reinstall it on the same computer, you don't need to deactivate the key. Tableau will use the key when reinstalled. For example, if you are moving Tableau from one drive on a computer to a different drive on the same computer. For information on how to deactivate a product key, see tsm licenses deactivate.