Reference: Host system resource guidelines

You can use the following guidelines to estimate host system requirements for Tanium Core Platform servers. Exact requirements vary based on dynamic usage factors, such as the Tanium solutions that you use and the number of managed endpoints. Because usage differs among customers, the requirements listed in the following tables are based on representative data from numerous deployments ranging in size from under 1,000 to over 500,000 managed endpoints.

Tanium Core Platform server host systems

Operating system support

The Tanium Server, Module Server, and Zone Server support the Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions of the following Windows Server platforms. The servers do not support the Server Core or Nano Server options.

Windows Server 2022
Windows Server 2019
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2012

Resource requirements

Use the following table to determine the device type (physical or virtual) and resources that the Tanium Core Platform server hosts require. The columns indicate the total number of endpoints that are deployed.

In a Tanium Server high availability (HA) deployment, both servers must meet or exceed the requirements for the total number of endpoints that your deployment targets. That means each server must be able to independently handle load from the full deployment in the event of failure.

In a Zone Server HA deployment, provision each Zone Server to independently handle load for the cluster in case one HA peer fails.

Certain Tanium modules and shared services have additional server resource requirements. See Solution-specific requirements for Tanium Core Platform servers.

The following table lists the minimum requirements. Tanium Support might recommend more resources based on factors that are specific to your deployment. Contact Tanium Support for details.

Table 1: Tanium Core Platform server resource requirements
Server¹	Specification	Up to 10,000	Up to 35,000	Up to 75,000	Up to 150,000	Up to 500,000²
Tanium Server	Server device type	Physical or virtual³	Physical or virtual³	Physical⁴	Physical⁴	Physical⁴
	CPU cores⁵	8	16	24	40	80
	Memory	32 GB	48 GB	96 GB	256 GB	512 GB
	Disk Space⁶	250 GB	400 GB	750 GB	1.5 TB	3 TB
Module Server	Server device type	Physical or virtual³	Physical or virtual³	Physical⁴	Physical⁴	Physical⁴
	CPU cores⁵	8	16	24	40	80
	Memory	32 GB	48 GB	96 GB	256 GB	512 GB
	Disk Space	150 GB	150 GB	150 GB	200 GB	300 GB
Zone Server	Server device type	Physical or virtual³	Physical or virtual³	Physical⁴	Physical⁴	Physical⁴
	CPU cores⁵	8	16	24	40	80
	Memory	16 GB	24 GB	48 GB	128 GB	256 GB
	Disk Space⁶	250 GB	400 GB	750 GB	1.5 TB	3 TB
¹ To ensure that the response times of Tanium Core Platform servers do not adversely affect the user experience, the servers must be able to sustain I/O loads of at least 30 MBps at 2,500 IOPS and maintain disk utilization below 15 percent under such workloads. Sustaining 2,500 IOPS ensures that disk latency stays below 15 milliseconds (ms) on the drive where the servers and modules are stored. ² The Tanium Core Platform supports over one million endpoints. Contact Tanium Support for the resource specifications of deployments with over 500,000 endpoints. ³ On virtual systems, allocate reserved resources whenever possible regardless of the number of endpoints. ⁴ Tanium strongly recommends that the host system have 10Gb network cards with chipsets from Intel for deployments with over 70,000 endpoints. ⁵ Calculate CPU cores based on only the physical cores from allocated CPUs. ⁶ The disk space listed for the Tanium Server and Zone Server is the minimum space required for Microsoft Windows and the Tanium Core Platform server software. If you use Tanium™ Patch, the server needs an additional 500 GB of disk space to store and manage patches. If you use Tanium™ Deploy, the server needs additional disk space greater than or equal to twice the Deploy software library storage.

PostgreSQL server host system

Contact Tanium Support for guidance on host computer specifications and PostgreSQL server version specifications if you install the Tanium database on a PostgreSQL server.

SQL server host system

Operating system support

If you use an SQL server for the Tanium database, you can install the SQL server on Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions of the following Windows Server platforms. The Server Core and Nano Server options are not supported.

Windows Server 2022
Windows Server 2019
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2012

The Tanium database server supports Microsoft SQL Server 2019 or later.

Use the following table to determine SQL server host and version specifications. The columns indicate the total number of endpoints that are deployed.

Table 2: Database server operating system support
Edition	Up to 500	Up to 10,000	Up to 35,000	Up to 75,000	Up to 150,000	Up to 500,000¹
Express²
Standard
Business Intelligence
Enterprise
¹ The Tanium Core Platform supports over one million endpoints. Contact Tanium Support for the resource specifications of deployments with over 500,000 endpoints. ² Proof-of-concept deployments only.

Resource requirements

Use the following table to determine the device type (physical or virtual) and resources that the SQL server host requires. The columns indicate the total number of endpoints that are deployed.

The following table lists the minimum requirements. Tanium Support might recommend more resources based on factors that are specific to your deployment. Contact Tanium Support for details.

Table 3: SQL server resource requirements
Specification	Up to 10,000	Up to 35,000	Up to 75,000	Up to 150,000	Up to 500,000¹
Server device type	Physical or virtual²	Physical or virtual²	Physical³	Physical³	Physical³
CPU cores⁴	4	8	10	16	32
Memory	8 GB	16 GB	24 GB	32 GB	48 GB
Disk space⁵	150 GB	200 GB	300 GB	500 GB	750 GB
Database size	20 GB	75 GB	150 GB	300 GB	500 GB
Disk array IOPS⁶	2,000	2,000	2,000	2,000	2,000
¹ The Tanium Core Platform supports over one million endpoints. Contact Tanium Support for the resource specifications of deployments with over 500,000 endpoints. ² On virtual systems, allocate reserved resources whenever possible regardless of the number of endpoints. ³ Tanium strongly recommends that the host system have 10Gb network cards with chipsets from Intel for deployments with over 70,000 endpoints. ⁴ Calculate CPU cores based on only the physical cores from allocated CPUs. ⁵ Total space for Microsoft OS and SQL Server. Microsoft recommends that the disk space available for memory dumps be at least three times the amount of installed RAM. The required disk space for the OS and SQL Server accounts for the size of the OS, the size of the swap file, and the space required for memory dumps. ⁶ To ensure that server response times do not adversely affect the user experience, disk latency must be lower than 10 ms.

Most organizations achieve optimal performance using a single, internal RAID array when Microsoft SQL Server transaction logging is set to Simple. If you plan to enable Full transaction logging, you might have to provision an external RAID array to manage the transaction logs.

To determine the specific disk drive performance characteristics and RAID configuration necessary to support deployments of different sizes, see Table 3 for the minimum input and output operations per second (IOPS) that the database server requires. Using IOPS as the performance measurement enables internal storage administrators or storage vendors the flexibility to recommend a final disk configuration to provide optimal performance at the least cost.

The results reported from each managed endpoint use an average of about 20 MB of data. However, storage requirements are directly related to platform usage patterns. Unless actual measurements confirm that the underlying disk infrastructure provides the minimum acceptable performance, the best practice is to not use a storage attached network (SAN) for the Tanium application server databases.