Tableau Server Administrator Advanced Practice Exam: Hard Questions 2025

A global organization is deploying Tableau Server on-premises across two data centers for disaster recovery. The primary site must serve all traffic under normal operation, and the secondary site should be able to take over with minimal data loss. Network latency between sites is moderate, and the organization wants to avoid complex multi-node stretching across data centers. Which architecture best meets these requirements?

After adding a second node to scale background tasks, extract refreshes intermittently fail and the Backgrounder queue grows. Admin notices that the new node can reach the database servers, but jobs that require file access (for example, some scripted inputs and certain file-based connections) fail only when scheduled on the new node. What is the most likely root cause and the best corrective action?

A security team requires that user authentication uses the company IdP with SAML and that Tableau Server never stores long-lived credentials for downstream databases. Analysts currently publish workbooks with embedded database credentials to avoid prompting end users. Which approach best satisfies both the SSO requirement and the prohibition on stored DB credentials while keeping the user experience reasonable?

An organization uses AD groups to provision Tableau Server users. They need a model where access is driven by AD group membership, but they also want to ensure that when users leave the company, their Tableau content ownership is reassigned automatically and licenses are reclaimed promptly. What is the best operational approach?

A Tableau Server site uses a combination of group-based permissions and occasional user exceptions. Over time, users report inconsistent access: some can see projects they should not, and others cannot run flows they should. You are asked to stabilize permissions with minimal disruption and make future access reviews straightforward. Which remediation approach is best?

A company wants to segregate content between two business units (BU1 and BU2). Requirements: (1) BU admins must manage users, groups, and content for their BU without seeing the other BU; (2) a central platform team must enforce server-wide settings and manage upgrades; (3) some shared certified data sources must be accessible to both BUs. Which design best meets these requirements?

Your org is experiencing “data sprawl”: hundreds of similar published data sources pointing to the same databases, inconsistent extract schedules, and multiple versions of the truth. Performance is also degrading during peak refresh windows. You need a governance model that improves consistency and reduces redundant refresh load without blocking agile development. What is the best approach?

A regulated company must ensure that only approved workbooks are visible broadly, while allowing iterative development. Developers want to share drafts with testers without risking accidental broad exposure. Which content governance pattern best satisfies this?

Users report that Tableau Server is slow only in the mornings. Views take longer to load and publishing intermittently fails. You observe that background extract refreshes are scheduled heavily in the same window, but the database team insists their systems are healthy. What is the most effective first action to isolate whether the bottleneck is on Tableau Server vs. the data tier?

After rotating a TLS certificate, users can access Tableau Server in a browser, but Tableau Desktop publishing fails with SSL trust errors. Internal monitoring also shows that some API clients intermittently fail. What is the most likely cause and the best fix?