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Installation

General Information

Option 1: Easy Install on a VPS

Option 2: Install behind NAT Router

Option 3: Installs by Network Wizards

Update Regularly

General Information

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System Requirements

A fresh Linux VM running either Debian 11, Debian 12 or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with at least 4GB RAM on x64 or aarch64 (arm64) architecture.

Warning

The provided install script assumes a fresh server with no software installed on it. Attempting to run it on an existing server with other services will break things and the install will fail.

Danger

The installation script configures a production-grade reverse proxy using Nginx, which manages TLS termination and appropriately routes all requests to the correct backends. Consequently, there's no need for an additional proxy in front of your instance, as it will lead to complications. If you opt to use another reverse proxy (e.g., NPM, HAproxy) in conjunction with the existing Nginx reverse proxy (which is essential for TRMM to function correctly) you must address potential challenges arising from double proxying, and you should NOT expect your install to function properly out of the box. Be advised, configurations involving a secondary reverse proxy will be considered "unsupported." This designation is not to deter modifications but stems from the development team's capacity constraints. Their primary focus remains on enhancing the core software, and they cannot support an endless variety of setups. Check unsupported proxies and unsupported guidelines for more info.

Note

The install script has been tested on the following public cloud providers: Oracle Cloud Free Tier (arm64), DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, BuyVM (highly recommended), Hetzner, AWS, Google Cloud and Azure, as well as behind NAT on Hyper-V, ESXi and Proxmox (CT's on Proxmox are unsupported, only use VMs).

Note

CPU: 1 core is fine for < 200 agents with limited checks/tasks.

Disk space and speed are dependent on your use case. Of course faster is better SSD/NVMe. Space is dependent on how long you're keeping historical data, how many checks/script runs and their output size. 50GB should be fine for < 12months of history on < 200 agents with < 30 checks/tasks run at reasonable time intervals.

Tip

Enable logging of your terminal output. A good Windows SSH client is MobaXTerm. It'll automatically log everything so if you need it later (like install logs because you have a 50x error trying to login after) they'll be easy to grab and share with support. It has an integrated SCP client too!

Install Requirements

  • A TOTP based authenticator app. Some popular ones are Google Authenticator, Authy, and Microsoft Authenticator.

Warning

  1. Per RFC 1304 special chars in domain names are not allowed (like _ ). Only a-z 0-9 and the hyphen (-)
  2. Avoid sub-sub domains greater than 4. (Best: rmm.example.com Good: rmm.corp.example.com Bad: rmm.corp.xyz.example.com) Country TLDs like co.uk count as one layer.

Update Recommendations

Note

We highly recommend staying current with updates (do not lag behind more than 1 major version) while Tactical RMM is still working towards its 1.0 release.

Until we reach production release, there may be architectural changes that may be made to Tactical RMM and only a regular patching schedule is supported by developers.

Option 1: Easy Install on a VPS

Install on a VPS: DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, BuyVM (highly recommended), Hetzner, AWS, Google Cloud and Azure to name a few.

Use something that meets minimum specs

Step 1 - Run Updates on OS

SSH into the server as root.

Install the pre-reqs and apply the latest updates:

apt update
apt install -y wget curl sudo ufw
apt -y upgrade

If a new kernel is installed, reboot the server with the reboot command.

Step 2 - Create a User

Create a user named tactical to run the RMM and add it to the sudoers group.

useradd -m -G sudo -s /bin/bash tactical
passwd tactical

Info

Skip this step if your VM is not publicly exposed to the world e.g. running behind NAT. You should setup the firewall rules in your router instead.
Port 443 TCP: For agents and tech login to rmm and mesh.
Port 22 TCP: For SSH, server administration only

ufw default deny incoming
ufw default allow outgoing
ufw allow https

Info

SSH (port 22 TCP) is only required for you to remotely login and do basic server administration for your RMM. It is not needed for any agent communication.

SSH Firewall Rule

Allow SSH from only allowed IP's (highly recommended)

ufw allow proto tcp from X.X.X.X to any port 22
ufw allow proto tcp from X.X.X.X to any port 22

Allow SSH from everywhere (not recommended)

ufw allow ssh

Enable and activate the firewall:

ufw enable && ufw reload

Note

You should/will never login to the server as root again unless something has gone horribly wrong, and you're working with the developers.

Step 4 - Create DNS A records

Warning

All 3 domain names have to be at the same subdomain level because you only get one LetsEncrypt wildcard cert, and it'll only apply to that level of DNS name.

We'll be using example.com as our domain for this example.

Info

The RMM uses 3 different sites. The Vue frontend e.g. rmm.example.com which is where you'll be accessing your RMM from the browser, the REST backend e.g. api.example.com and MeshCentral e.g. mesh.example.com
rmm. api. and mesh. are what we recommend, but you can use whatever you want if they're already in use.

  1. Get the public IP of your server with curl https://icanhazip.tacticalrmm.io
  2. Open the DNS manager of wherever the domain you purchased is hosted.
  3. Create 3 A records: rmm, api and mesh and point them to the public IP of your server:

arecords

Step 5 - Run the install script

Switch to the tactical user:

su - tactical

Tip

If you can snapshot do that now so you can quickly restore to this point again and re-run the install in case something goes wrong with the install script.

Download and run the install script:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/amidaware/tacticalrmm/master/install.sh
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

Info

Already have your own SSL certificate? Call the install script with the --use-own-cert flag, like this: 

./install.sh --use-own-cert
Ensure your cert and private key exist on the server as the install script will prompt you for the locations of these 2 files.

Also ensure that it is a legitimate, trusted certificate and includes the full chain for proper validation. Do not use this option with self-signed certs.

Danger

You can install with the --insecure switch to use any DNS name you want. Self signed certs will be generated for all the DNS names, and all SSL certificate chain validation will be disabled in TRMM.

./install.sh --insecure

Requirements: You MUST open all 3 subdomains in your web browser and accept the security warning for each site BEFORE LOGIN or you will get "Backend is offline (network error)" errors.

✅ Quick install for easy test driving
✅ No public DNS name needed. Use irulez.local or any DNS name you want.
✅ No cert renewals
❌ All agent communication is vulnerable to MITM compromise and can be hacked.
❌ You can't convert from an --insecure to trusted cert install without reinstalling all your agents

Answer the initial questions when prompted. Replace example.com with your domain.

questions

Step 6 - Deploy the TXT record in your DNS manager for Let's Encrypt wildcard certs

Skip this step if using your own certs or using self-signed certs.

Warning

TXT records can take anywhere from 1 minute to a few hours to propagate depending on your DNS provider.
You should verify the TXT record has been deployed first before pressing Enter.
A quick way to check is with the following command:
dig -t txt _acme-challenge.example.com (not from the TRMM server)
or test using: https://viewdns.info/dnsrecord/ Enter: _acme-challenge.example.com

txtrecord

dnstxt

Create a login for the RMM web UI:

rmmlogin

A bunch of URLS / usernames / passwords will be printed out at the end of the install script. Save these somewhere safe. Recover them if you didn't

Step 7 - Login

Navigate to https://rmm.example.com and login with the username/password you created during install.

Once logged in, you will be redirected to the initial setup page.

Create your first client/site and choose the default timezone.

You're Done

Update Regularly

Option 2: Install Behind NAT Router

Install in your local network using: Dedicated hardware, Hyper-V, Proxmox or ESXi. All been tested and work fine.

Do everything from Option 1: Easy Install

If You Only Have Agents on the Private Network / Subnet

Make sure your local DNS server (or agents hosts file) have your Tactical RMM server IP addresses for the 3 domain names: rmm, api and mesh

Agents Exist Outside the Private Network / Subnet - Setup Port Forwarding

If you have agents outside your local network: Make sure the public DNS servers have A records for the 3 Tactical RMM server domain names: rmm, api and mesh

Login to your router / NAT device.

  1. Set your TRMM server as a static IP (Using a DHCP reservation is usually safer).
  2. Port forward TCP 443 to your TRMM servers private IP address.

Note

https://portforward.com/ can help with Port Forwarding setup

You're Done

Update Regularly

Option 3: Installs by Network Wizards

Use the scripts above.

Requirements

  1. TLD domain name which is internet resolvable (this is for a LetsEncrypt DNS wildcard request during the install script validated by DNS txt record).
  2. Agents need to be able to connect to your server via DNS lookup (hosts file, local DNS, smoke signals etc.).
    • Test from agent: ping rmm.example.com. Should result in the IP of your Tactical RMM server.
    • Test from agent: ping api.example.com. Should result in the IP of your Tactical RMM server.
    • Test from agent: ping mesh.example.com. Should result in the IP of your Tactical RMM server.

Note

Did you notice #2 doesn't need to be something publicly available?

That's it. You're a wizard, you know how to satisfy these 2 items.

You'll probably enjoy browsing thru the Unsupported section of the docs.

Update Regularly

We've said it before, we'll say it again.

  • We recommend regular updates.

    • Every 2-3 months.

      • Do it when you update your SSL certs.

Especially don't get behind 2 major rev's. Lots of agent connectivity changes occurring. If you don't keep up, you'll be needing to do manual updates by adjusting the updates.sh and specifying older branches...then doing update, wait for all agents to get updated...then do the next major branch, then wait for agent updates...until you're current. Can we say #Painful.

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