How to Backup Tableau Server

Backing up your Tableau Server isn't just a technical chore, it's the lifeline that protects your organization's analytics investment from hardware failure, data corruption, or simple human error. A solid backup strategy is the difference between a minor hiccup and a full-blown data disaster. This guide will walk you through exactly why backups are so important, what they contain, and a step-by-step process for creating and managing them effectively.

Why Regular Backups Are Non-Negotiable

In the world of data, hoping for the best is not a strategy. An effective backup plan is your first and last line of defense. Here's why building a consistent backup routine for your Tableau Server is critical.

• Disaster Recovery: This is the most obvious reason. If a server crashes, a hard drive fails, or a critical system file becomes corrupted, your backup is the only way to restore your entire Tableau environment. Without it, you'd be faced with rebuilding everything from scratch - a task that could take days or weeks, resulting in significant downtime and lost productivity.
• Protection Against Human Error: Mistakes happen. A well-intentioned user might accidentally delete a crucial data source or an administrator could change a setting that has unforeseen consequences. A recent backup allows you to roll back the server to a known good state, quickly reversing the error.
• Safe Upgrades and Maintenance: Before you perform any major server upgrade, apply a maintenance release, or change a critical configuration, you should always create a fresh backup. This acts as a safety net. If the upgrade fails or introduces unexpected issues, you can easily restore your server to its previous state.
• Business Continuity: Your Tableau Server is likely a central hub for business reporting and decision-making. Extended downtime isn't just an inconvenience, it can halt critical business operations. Regular, tested backups ensure you can get the system back online quickly, minimizing disruption.

What Exactly Is Included in a Tableau Server Backup?

Understanding what's inside a backup (and what isn't) is key to a successful recovery. A complete Tableau Server backup isn't just one file, it's a combination of your data and your server's configuration, which you need to handle in two separate steps.

1. Your Tableau Server Data (The .tsbak file)

The core of the backup is a single file with a .tsbak extension, created using the tsm maintenance backup command. Think of this as the archive containing all of the content and metadata that your users create and interact with every day. It includes:

• The Tableau PostgreSQL Database: This is the brain of your Tableau Server. It stores all the vital metadata, including user information, groups, permissions, project structures, workbook details, and data source connections.
• File Store Data: This includes all the "assets" that reside on your server, most notably data extracts (.hyper files) and published data sources. For environments that rely heavily on extracts, the File Store can be quite large, and it's all captured in the .tsbak file.

In short, the .tsbak file contains almost everything that makes your Tableau Server unique to your organization from a content and user perspective.

2. Your Tableau Server Configuration & Topology

While the .tsbak file holds your data, it does not hold the technical settings related to how the server itself is configured. These settings must be exported separately into a JSON file using the tsm settings export command. These settings control the architecture and behavior of your server, including:

• Server Topology: In a multi-node environment, this defines which processes (Data Server, VizQL Server, etc.) run on which machine. Restoring to a new server without this information would be a manual, error-prone process.
• System Settings: This covers a wide range of administrative configurations, such as SMTP server settings for email alerts, authentication configurations (SAML, Active Directory, OpenID Connect), licensing information, and custom gateway ports.

Critically, you must also manually back up files that aren't managed by TSM, like external SSL certificates and any custom branding images or custom drivers you've installed. For a complete recovery, you need all three components: the .tsbak data backup, the exported configuration JSON file, and any external assets like SSL certificates.

Pre-Backup Checklist: Prepare for a Smooth Run

Before you jump into the command line, taking a few preparatory steps will help ensure your backup process is successful and efficient.

• Check Your Permissions: You'll need administrator permissions on the Tableau Server machine to run TSM (Tableau Services Manager) commands. Ensure the account you're using is part of the local Administrators group or a TSM-authorized group.
• Verify Sufficient Disk Space: The backup process requires significant free disk space. TSM will check for this before starting, but it's good practice to verify yourself. A safe rule of thumb is to have at least as much free disk space as the size of your Tableau Server data directory, specifically <data directory>\data\tabsvc\filestore.
• Choose a Backup Location: By default, Tableau saves the backup files in the backups folder within your Tableau Server data directory. During the backup process, temporary files are created in the tabsvc\temp directory. For safety and organization, it's best to always move your final backup files off the server.
• Communicate With Users: While it's possible to take a backup while Tableau Server is running, the process is disk and CPU intensive and can slow down the server's performance. For large or highly active servers, it's recommended to stop the server before the backup. Be sure to schedule this during a low-usage window and notify your users in advance about the short period of downtime.

Step-by-Step Guide: Creating a Tableau Server Backup

This process uses the TSM command-line interface. Follow these steps carefully to create a complete and secure backup.

Step 1: Open Terminal or Command Prompt as an Administrator

On Windows, right-click the Command Prompt icon and select "Run as administrator." On Linux, open your preferred terminal. All subsequent tsm commands will be run from here.

Step 2: Stop Tableau Server (Optional but Recommended)

To ensure data consistency and prevent any files from being locked during the process, it's safest to stop the server.

tsm stop

Step 3: Run the Backup Command

This is the main event. This command creates the critical .tsbak file. Using the flags is highly recommended for better file management.

tsm maintenance backup -f your-backup-name -d

• -f <filename>: This sets a specific name for your backup file. If you omit this, a default name like backup-yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm will be generated.
• -d: This appends the current date to the filename you provided with the -f flag. This is extremely useful for versioning your backups. For example, the command above would create a file named your-backup-name-2023-10-27.tsbak.

The process may take some time depending on the size of your repository and extracts. You'll see progress updates in the command window. A Backup successful message will appear upon completion.

Step 4: Export Configuration and Topology Data

Now, create a backup of your server's architectural settings. This step is fast but vitally important for a complete restore.

tsm settings export -f config.json

This command saves your server's topology and configuration details into a file named config.json in the default backups directory.

Step 5: Copy Your Backup Files to a Secure Location

Your server's local disk is not a safe long-term storage location for backups. Immediately after the backup is complete, copy the generated .tsbak file and the config.json file to a separate, secure, and reliable location. This could be:

• A network storage drive (NAS)
• Cloud storage like Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, or Google Cloud Storage
• A separate physical server

Remember to also save copies of your external SSL certificates and any other custom files alongside these backups.

Step 6: Restart Tableau Server

If you stopped the server back in Step 2, it's now time to bring it back online.

tsm start

Automating Your Backups for Reliability

Manually running backups is fine for a one-off task, but for a consistent strategy, automation is essential. Automation eliminates the risk of someone forgetting to run the backup and ensures it runs consistently during off-peak hours.

You can achieve this by creating a simple script and using your operating system's built-in scheduler.

• For Windows: Create a batch script (.bat) that contains the sequence of tsm commands (stop, backup, export config, start). You can add commands like robocopy to automatically move the files to a network share. Then, use Windows Task Scheduler to run this script on a daily schedule.
• For Linux: Create a bash script (.sh) with the same tsm command sequence. Use cron to schedule the job to run automatically at your desired interval. You can use commands like aws s3 cp or scp inside the script to transfer the backup files to a remote location.

Backup Strategy Best Practices

Creating the backup is only half the battle. A strong strategy dictates how you manage those backups over time.

• Be Regular: For most organizations, a daily backup is the standard. Ask yourself: how much work from a single day can we afford to lose? The answer will define your backup frequency.
• Store Off-Site: Never keep your only backups on the same physical machine as your production server. If a server or its entire data center has an issue, your backups will be lost along with everything else.
• Version Your Backups: Don't just overwrite the same backup file every night. Keep a rolling set of backups, such as the last 7 daily backups and a weekly backup for the past month. This gives you multiple restore points in case corruption occurred several days ago and went unnoticed.
• Test Your Restores: A backup is useless if it can't be restored. Periodically (at least quarterly), take your latest backup and run through a restore process on a separate, non-production test server. This crucial check proves that your files are valid and your recovery plans are up-to-date and function as expected.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the Tableau Server backup process is a fundamental skill for any system administrator. By combining the .tsbak data backup with an export of your configuration settings and moving them to a secure, off-site location, you create a robust safety net that protects a key business asset from unforeseen interruptions. Putting this plan into action and using automation ensures your suite of data analytics will be reliably dependable.

Managing server infrastructure, backup scripts, and disaster recovery plans is a significant responsibility and sometimes distracts from the ultimate goal - getting insights from your data. At Graphed , we built our tool to help teams get to the insights faster by skipping the BI infrastructure management entirely. Since our platform connects directly to your data sources and allows you to build dashboards using simple natural language, you can focus on answering business questions instead of worrying about server performance, maintenance schedules, and command-line scripts. This approach lets anyone on your team start exploring data and getting answers in seconds, no matter their technical skill level.