Managing the Tanium license

The Tanium™ license file (tanium.license) enables the entitlements for your deployment, such as the Tanium solutions that you can use. Tanium Cloud automatically manages the license. Contact Tanium Support to makes changes to the license, such as adding solutions.

The Administrator reserved role is required to see and manage the Tanium license.

License expiration

The Tanium license validity period starts when Tanium generates the license, regardless of when your organization activates it. The Tanium™ Cloud Management Portal (CMP) notifies youConsole shows a warning when the license will expire within 30 days, but only if you sign in as a user who is assigned the Administrator role. Your Tanium or partner account team will contact the procurement department of your organization well before the license expires to start the renewal process. If the license expires before it is renewed, you cannot access Tanium Cloud. If the license expires only for a particular solution, that solution becomes unavailable.

If the license expires, you cannot import, export, or update any Tanium solutions. The following user guides list additional effects of license expiration. After you upload a new license, full functionality is restored for all solutions.

View license details

  1. From the Main menu, go to Administration > Configuration > Tanium License. This page shows most of the details about your Tanium license, including:

    • Maximum number of managed endpoints (Seat Count):

      To determine license compliance, the Tanium Server identifies each endpoint by its fully qualified domain name (FQDN). The server considers an endpoint to be managed if its Tanium Client has registered in the past 30 days. The Tanium Console displays a warning when client registrations exceed the Seat Count. For the current tally of managed endpoints, see Managed endpoints count for license compliance.

    • License validity period:

      The page displays the license Duration, Days Left, and (for each solution) the Start Date and Expiration Date.

    • Licensed solutions:

      The grid displays entitlements for each Tanium solution. A zero indicates solutions that are not licensed.

  2. (Optional) To see all the IP addresses and FQDNs that the license authorizes for accessing the Tanium Console:

    1. Enter https://<tanium_server>/info in your browser URL field, where <tanium_server> is the Tanium Server FQDN or IP address.

    2. Sign in as a user who is assigned the Administrator reserved role.

    3. See the licensed_server_name setting.

Replace the license

Use the Tanium License page to apply a new license if the current one expires soon or your entitlements change.

In an active-active deployment, replace the license on each Tanium Server in case one server becomes unavailable for a long time.

  1. Contact Tanium Support to obtain a new license. You must provide the FQDNs or IP addresses of the physical or virtual devices that host your Tanium Servers.
  2. Copy the new license to a location that is accessible from the system that you use to access the Tanium Console.
  3. (Optional) Back up the current license. The steps depend on the infrastructure of your Tanium Core Platform:
  4. From the Main menu, go to Administration > Configuration > Tanium License.
  5. Click Upload, select the new license file, and click Open.

    The Tanium Server automatically activates the new license after a few minutes.

Troubleshoot license issues

The following table lists alerts and common issues related to the Tanium license. If conditions trigger an alert, the Tanium Console displays it whenever you sign in. The listed corrective actions are independent options to consider, not sequential steps.

You can also see the alerts in the Tanium Server logs. See Tanium Core Platform Deployment Reference Guide: Server logs.

 Table 1: Tanium license alerts and common issues
Issues and alerts Corrective actions

Common issue: Tanium features unavailable

Some Tanium features that you expected to access are unavailable. This might happen if you:

  • Activated the wrong license.

  • Accessed the wrong Tanium Server.

  • Renamed or moved the license file.

  • Did not wait for long enough (one minute) for the license to activate after you replaced the license.

Common issue: higher than expected managed endpoints count

The Administration > Configuration > Client Status page might display a higher than expected number of managed endpoints for several reasons:

  • The Tanium Server counts each distinct FQDN as one managed endpoint. Computer names such as computer_name and computer_name.some_company.com might represent the same endpoint but produce two FQDNs.

  • Older versions of the Tanium Client might intermittently report both FQDN names and non-FQDN names, and report localhost or null as managed endpoints.

  • Non-persistent virtual machines might instantiate with unique names whenever they are initialized, which can inflate the count of managed endpoints.

If necessary, Contact Tanium Support about replacing the Tanium license with one that supports more managed endpoints.

In the Administration > Configuration > Client Status page, if the Filter by Client Version section includes version 0.0.0.0, clear the check box for that version. Version 0.0.0.0 is an artifact that the Tanium Server excludes from the managed endpoints tally.

Alert: license expired

The Tanium Console displays an alert indicating the number of days since the license expired. See License expiration.

 Replace the license.

Alert: maximum licensed seats exceeded

If the number of managed endpoints exceeds the licensed maximum, the Tanium Console displays a warning and indicates the current number of managed endpoints (used licensed seats). If the count exceeds the maximum by more than 10 percent, the Console also directs you to contact Tanium Support.

Contact Tanium Support for a new license that supports more managed endpoints and then Replace the license.