Maintaining Discover

Perform monthly maintenance tasks to ensure that Discover successfully performs scheduled activities on all the targeted endpoints and does not overuse endpoint or network resources. If Discover is not performing as expected, you might need to troubleshoot issues or change settings. See Troubleshooting Discover for related procedures.

Review and remediate Discover resource usage on the Module Server

  1. From the Main menu, go to Modules > Trends > Boards.

  2. Click the Discover - Module Health board and

    review the panels for resource usage issues.
  3. To troubleshoot resource usage issues, see Troubleshooting Discover.

Review and update discovery methods

  1. From the Main menu, go to Modules > Discover > Profiles.
  2. Review the Status of the profiles for warnings or errors. These conditions are the result of a profile mismatch between Tanium Cloudthe Tanium Server and the Tanium Client.
  3. Contact Tanium Support if necessary to resolve any warning or error conditions.
  4. Review profile configurations to verify that their discovery methods are optimal. For example:
  5. Troubleshoot discovery issues if necessary. See Troubleshooting Discover.
  6. Edit profiles if necessary to resolve discovery issues: go to the Profiles page, click the profile Name and reconfigure the settings. For detailed steps, see:
  7. Delete profiles that are no longer useful: on the Profiles page, select the profiles, and click Delete Profile.

Monitor and troubleshoot endpoints managed

The following table lists contributing factors into why the Endpoints Managed (%) metric might be lower than expected, and corrective actions you can make.

Contributing factor Corrective action
Installation Method Gap
  • Use existing tools that are already part of the infrastructure.
  • Use standard tools (might only cover a subset of potential systems in your environment) such as:
    • SCCM - easy deployment mechanism (Windows only)
    • Group Policy - with the correct setting can deploy Tanium Client (Windows only)
    • Salt - a common tool used for installation of software in any environment (cross-platform)
  • Use a Tanium-provided installation method such as Tanium Client Management
Credential Gaps Use of any of the Tanium-provided installation methods involves using credentials to access the systems. Work with various management teams and deployment teams to understand what credentials are available to do installations on systems. Work with server or workstation support teams to understand these areas.
Network Gaps Installing clients on "protected" networks such as DMZs or other sensitive areas is often a problem. These issues are technical, but the technical hurdles are generally an issue with policies and permissions. Work with the correct stakeholders to understand how Tanium will be used in the environment. Negotiate restrictions to be lessened to allow installation of Tanium Clients in these protected networks.

Monitor and troubleshoot mean time to manage

The following table lists contributing factors into why the Mean Time to Managed metric might be higher than expected, and corrective actions you can make.

Contributing factor Corrective action
No automation Tanium Discover can find clients, but with no action, a project can stall. Automating installation with Discover labels to target installation with Tanium Client Management is key. Take the human interaction out when possible, or build a workflow around Discover labels when items are found to feed into Tanium Connect and create help desk tickets or simple email lists.
Non-optimized Discovery settings
Regional Ownership

Often various regions have different support structures in the larger enterprise. Understanding what systems belong to these regions is key to providing the guidance to the owning team they need to help install. Use locations to export or visualize data. See this three-part article:

Understand your environment Proper deployment sometimes requires understanding what is working and what is not working. With the data grids and graphs in Discover, you have a real-time view the environment. With a high level view over time, you can understand how deployments are working and cross-pollinate various ideas that work across a larger group. To get a high level view, use the Discover boards in Tanium Trends: Tanium Community article: Use Trends to visualize Discover interfaces over time.