# Installing Tableau Server: Part 1 - Windows Basic Installation  Tableau Tutorial

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2022-05-04
- **Format:** Video · 50 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data engineering, Tool strategy
- **Tools:** Tableau (server)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/installing-tableau-server-part-1---windows-basic-installation--tableau-tutorial
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmnu6xvbVEw

I walk through a vanilla installation of Tableau Server on Windows, running Windows Server 2019 virtualised on my PC with Hyper-V. I cover finding the right documentation, hardware and RAM requirements, product activation with server ATR, the Tableau Services Manager interface and TSM command line, and confirming the finished server works.

## Key takeaways

- From version 2021.4 onwards Tableau Server requires 64GB of RAM, which is why I use 2021.3 for a low-spec virtualised demo; when counting virtual cores you halve the number against Tableau's requirements.
- The identity store choice (local authentication versus Active Directory) cannot be changed after installation without obliterating the server, backing up content and reconfiguring from scratch, so it must be right first time.
- Tableau Services Manager has both a web GUI (at the server name plus :8850) and a TSM command line; the command line offers the most powerful control and the TSM login is the server administrator account, not your Tableau or enterprise login.
- Handy TSM commands include 'tsm status -v' for the verbose state of every process, 'tsm jobs list' to see running jobs, and 'tsm jobs reconnect' to watch a job's live progress.
- Best practice in real organisations is to install Tableau off the operating system disk so OS patches stay separate from the software, and to add database drivers so the server can refresh non-standard data sources.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Intro and approach
- 0:50 Finding the right install documentation
- 2:50 Setting up virtualisation with Hyper-V
- 4:48 Minimum hardware and RAM requirements
- 9:04 Enabling virtualisation in BIOS
- 9:56 Running the Tableau Server installer
- 11:03 Install location and node choices
- 13:20 Product activation with server ATR
- 20:01 Logging into Tableau Services Manager
- 22:40 Configuring the identity store
- 24:17 Initialisation and the TSM command line
- 29:10 Useful TSM commands

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/installing-tableau-server-part-1---windows-basic-installation--tableau-tutorial

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena