Tableau Diaries

If you come across a case where you performed a maintenance of the virtual machine where your tableau server services are hosted and post your actions when you start the tableau server services, no tableau license information is available.  This can happen due to following reasons: Tableau Server licensing is linked to 4 Unique Machine Number (UMN). If any of these numbers change the server will go unlicensed.  1. UMN1 - hash of Boot disk serial number (only used for physical machines) 2. UMN2 - hash of MAC address 3. UMN3 - hash of Virtual Machine ID (only for VM's) 4. UMN4 - only apply for windows Virtualization (Hyper-V)  If any of following attributes are changed during this process your tableau server will become un-licensed.  Now what could be solution for this problem: Solution1 : Activate the licenses again, this could quiet time consuming task as well when you have multiple license key and your server is not internet facing. Steps already discussed in one of my previous bl

This blog post will cover the scenario where you have tableau server recently build and after enabling creator license, login with tableau server admin account doesn't work. It also covers a scenario where one needs to changes it server admin credentials due to any reason. Assumptions: 1. Tableau server 2019 and above. 2. Good understanding of tableau server administration. 3. Error Message - Your account is not licensed. Solution: tabcmd initialuser --username <server admin username> --server http://localhost tabcmd initialuser --server localhost:80 --username <server admin username> --password <server admin user password> --no-certcheck

For problem on tableau server related to license you would need to engage with tableau support, in order to get faster response (generally tableau support is quiet good in response) upload the details of your truststore to tableau support case. Problem Statement : Post tableau server reboot you don't see tableau licenses activated and engage with tableau support to identify the root cause. Action:  Execute the following statement from your shell prompt on tableau server serveractutil -view > <file_name> Upload the generated files to tableau support and get your questions answered. About this generated it consists of all information about license on the specific server.

As majority of enterprise company host their installation within their datacenter which has no direct access to internet. This would need tableau server license to be enabled in offline mode. Steps are very simple and straightforward but needs to be done with care as this may block your license keys. Below are the mentioned steps and are only applicable for subscription based license and subjected to change in future. Assumptions 1. Running tableau server 2019 and above. 2. Running tableau server on Linux. 3. Holds knowledge of tableau and it's Administration. Step1: Kindly get your license keys from tableau portal. Step2 : Login to tableau server machine and execute tsm licenses list (It will list down all existing license) tsm licenses get-offline-activation-file -k <license key> -o <output directory>   (Above will create a file named offline.tlq in directory specified) Step3 : Upload the activation file on tableau site https://www.tableau.com/support/activation and