Tanium Appliance overview

This guide describes how to deploy the Tanium Appliance in a Tanium Core Platform role and how to use TanOS menus.

Tanium Infrastructure types

There are two primary infrastructure options for deploying the Tanium Core Platform:

Hardened physical or virtual Tanium Appliance
Windows installation on customer-provided hardware

Tanium recommends that you deploy a physical or virtual Tanium Appliance when possible. The Tanium Appliance is purpose-built hardware designed for the low-latency and high-throughput needs of the Tanium Core Platform. The Tanium Appliance runs a tuned, hardened Linux-based OS. Deploying a Tanium Appliance has the following advantages:

Built and tested with specified hardware components that are proven to support the indicated deployment sizes.
Easy-to-use TanOS menus to quickly configure and deploy Tanium Core Platform roles.
Eliminates challenges or side-effects of OS patch deployments. Tanium tests updates to the OS and provides RPM updates that are simple to install.
Eliminates adverse interactions with third party tools or drivers.
Eliminates issues when provisioning service accounts needed by Tanium Core Platform components and solution modules.
Eliminates difficulty troubleshooting across components that were designed by multiple vendors. Tanium is the single point of contact for hardware, OS, and application support.
Reduces additional licensing costs for OS and database products. TanOS is based on a Linux OS and the Tanium Server role is integrated with a limited access database.
Improves Tanium Core Platform performance. The Tanium Core Platform runs even faster without the overhead of most Windows server systems.
Saves time. A controlled and consistent Tanium platform environment means high reliability. Your teams can focus on Tanium use cases instead of OS and hardware issues.

Download the Tanium Infrastructure data sheet for an overview of Tanium Infrastructure offerings.

Appliance roles

You can deploy a Tanium Appliance in any of the following Tanium Core Platform roles:

Tanium™ Server
The core server that communicates with clients. The Tanium Server also runs the UI console and API services and communicates with all other platform and solution components, as well as the content.tanium.com servers that host Tanium content packs and Tanium solution module import packages. The Tanium Server depends on a database server that is installed when the Tanium Server role is installed.
Tanium™ Module Server
A dedicated server to run application services and store files for Tanium solution modules. It is installed on a separate appliance to prevent intentional or accidental scripts from having a direct impact on the Tanium Server.
All-in-One
Tanium Server, Tanium Module Server, and database server on the same appliance. An All-in-One deployment is supported only for proof-of-concept (POC) deployments.
Tanium™ Zone Server
A server typically deployed in an enterprise DMZ network to proxy traffic between Tanium™ Clients that reside on limited-access networks and a Tanium Server that resides on the trusted core network.

Topology

In an enterprise production deployment, the Tanium™ Server and Tanium™ Module Server reside on separate Tanium Appliances.

Figure 1: Enterprise production or enterprise lab deployment

TanOS menus

The Tanium operating system (TanOS) includes a menu interface to guide you through installation, configuration, and maintenance tasks.

TanOS Flexible Menu Search

The instructions in this guide show the canonical navigation steps to complete a task. Alternatively, you can use the TanOS Flexible Menu Search (FMS) feature to navigate.

To access FMS, enter F from the tanadmin (main) menu.

------------------------------------------------------

                >>> tanadmin menu <<< 

         1: Tanium Installation Menu
         2: Tanium Operations Menu
         3: Tanium Support Menu
         4: Status Menu

         A: Appliance Configuration Menu
         B: Appliance Maintenance Menu
         C: User Administration Menu

         P: Password change (current user)
         Q: View End User License Agreement (EULA)

         F: Flexible Menu Search      <---------- 
         @: About this Appliance

         H: Help
         Z: Log out

------------------------------------------------------

For help with FMS, type help and then select the help menu.

        Welcome tanadmin to appliance-156.tam.local 

        TFMS (TanOS Flexible Menu Search)

         Type help for help text

 ------------------------------------------------------

>>> help
         help  TFMS Help

To navigate with FMS, start typing. Press the Tab key to complete the current word. Use the spacebar to go to a submenu and use the Enter key to select the menu.

        TFMS (TanOS Flexible Menu Search)

         Type help for help text

 ------------------------------------------------------

>>> appliance configuration networking 
                                networking  Appliance Maintenance Networking

FMS also has shortcuts to some menus. A shortcut is a keyword that navigates directly to the menu. For a list of shortcut keywords, type shortcuts.

        TFMS (TanOS Flexible Menu Search)

         Type help for help text

 ------------------------------------------------------

>>> shortcuts networking 


Alphabetically Sorted Shortcuts :

 about configuration db dns hostname ip ipsec main maintenance name
networking operations power privileged reset restricted routing
support tanadmin tanuser


>>> 
     about      About this appliance  
     appliance  Appliance Menu Items  
     main       Main Menu             
     support    Support Menu Items    
     tanium     Tanium Menu Items     
     status     Status Menu Items     
     shortcuts  Show Shortcut List    
     user       User Menu Items

This documentation may provide access to or information about content, products (including hardware and software), and services provided by third parties (“Third Party Items”). With respect to such Third Party Items, Tanium Inc. and its affiliates (i) are not responsible for such items, and expressly disclaim all warranties and liability of any kind related to such Third Party Items and (ii) will not be responsible for any loss, costs, or damages incurred due to your access to or use of such Third Party Items unless expressly set forth otherwise in an applicable agreement between you and Tanium.

Further, this documentation does not require or contemplate the use of or combination with Tanium products with any particular Third Party Items and neither Tanium nor its affiliates shall have any responsibility for any infringement of intellectual property rights caused by any such combination. You, and not Tanium, are responsible for determining that any combination of Third Party Items with Tanium products is appropriate and will not cause infringement of any third party intellectual property rights.

Tanium is committed to the highest accessibility standards to make interaction with Tanium software more intuitive and to accelerate the time to success. For more information, see Tanium Product Accessibility.

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