We are thrilled to announce that after a year of rigorous development and testing, the Tenzir Platform is now generally available! Our journey began at Black Hat 2023, where we first introduced the Tenzir Platform in early access mode. Over the past year, we've worked diligently, incorporating user feedback and refining our technology to ensure stability and performance. Today, at Black Hat 2024, we are proud to officially launch the Tenzir Platform, confident in its capabilities and excited to bring it to a wider audience.
What is the Tenzir Platform?
The Tenzir Platform is a management layer for Tenzir Nodes. Prior to the existence of the platform, users had to use a command line interface or REST API to manage their pipelines. The platform exposes a nice web app that makes this process fun and easy, plus it avoids the need that users need to have access deep into the infrastructure to connect to each individual node.
There exist two TLS connections: one from the user's browser to the platform, and one from every node the platform. The platform proxies requests and stores high-level metadata state. But all the processing via pipelines takes place at the node. Think of the platform as control plane and the connected nodes as data plane.
What has changed since the launch?
A lot has happened in the last year! We'd love to summarize all the goodness that we built and shipped, but to keep it concise, here at the three most exciting things.
Library & Packages
Users can now one-click deploy a bundle of pipelines by installing a package from the library. Over the last year, we heard many times that writing pipelines from scratch is a time-consuming task, as it also requires learning our own Tenzir Query Language (TQL). Even though TQL is easy to learn if you have a Splunk background, there's still a ramp-up phase to become productive data pipeline wizard.
Packages fix that. Get ready for instant value by simply installing a package from our community library hosted at GitHub at tenzir/library. Yes, you got it right: the community library is open source and we encourage contributions.
We are ultra-excited about this feature, as it marks a new era of productivity and time-to-value for our customers. Stay tuned for a lot of packages to arrive over the next weeks and months!
TQL2
From day one, we wanted to make working with data easy. This meant that we needed to deeply understand our target audience and their preferred way of working. We quickly learned that pipelines offer a sweet spot between easy-of-use and expressiveness. There are numerous pipeline languages out there, and after analyzing most of them in great depth, we were still not satisfied by the state of the art. We wanted to push the boundary in terms of simplicity and expressiveness to innovate.
This ambition culminated in our own Tenzir Query Language (TQL). The first version was powerful, yet limited from a language perspective. After gaining hands-on experience and user feedback over the last year, we identified various angles for improvement that resulted TQL2—a full language revamp.
Check out our TQL migration guide to learn about the technical details.
Complete Redesign
Finally, the app got a new coat of paint. We went from a playful, monochrome look to a much sleeker, modern data app. Check out the difference between now and then:
How can I use the Platform?
At Tenzir, we host one instance of the platform at app.tenzir.com for our users and customers.
Tenzir comes in four editions:
- Community Edition: Our free edition! For home labbers, researchers, and curious data hackers.
- Professional Edition: For consultants, small businesses, and self-serve needs.
- Enterprise Edition: For enterprises, system integrators, and value-added resellers.
- Sovereign Edition: For on-prem needs, service providers, and OEM solutions.
The first three editions use the platform that we host. If you need to operate in an air-gapped environment, we also got you covered. The Sovereign Edition allows you to host the entire platform yourself. Our tenzir/platform GitHub repository hosts example Docker Compose files, and our docs explain how to deploy the platform.
Will the Community Edition remain free?
Yes. Here is why: Because the platform is primarily proxying information, it doesn't require a lot of resources to operate. As a result, it doesn't incur a lot infrastructure cost on our end. It's not a loss leader!
How do I get started?
Just visit app.tenzir.com and create a free account. May your data pipe dreams become a reality!
Any question or in need for more guidance? Send us an email at info@tenzir.com or visit our Discord server for a direct line to our team and growing community.