This is our first newsletter of the new year, and it’s tempting to look back at the year that was, or make predictions about what the future holds. But what about the here and now?
As our CEO and co-founder Avery writes in a new post, we’re already living in the future, from a tech perspective. Most people have access to computational power that would’ve seemed unimaginable just a few decades (or even years) back. It can be easy to miss the march of progress, but in many areas of the tech world it is undeniable.
At Tailscale, we’ve made it our mission to help people make small networks, so you don’t have to worry about all the problems that come with everything being connected to everything else. Avery’s post on living in the future is a good reminder that even those small networks can be very powerful.
Product Updates
- 10,000 customers, a new Operations SVP, and the bigger picture
Today, we’re celebrating two milestones at once: First, we’ve surpassed 10,000 business customers. Just 10 months ago, we were at 5,000 — a number that took us over four years to reach. Second, we’re welcoming Grace Lin as our new SVP of Operations. Grace isn’t just an expert in scaling companies; she’s an expert in doing it with thoughtfulness, integrity, and precision. - Better Apple device management with Jamf Pro, integrated with Tailscale
For teams managing fleets of Apple devices, Jamf Pro is well-known as a leading MDM solution. Those teams can now count on an integration with Tailscale to simplify installing and configuring Tailscale on those devices, and to keep the networking access requirements under control. - Better node monitoring with new client metrics for Prometheus
Tailscale client metrics are now available for local or remote examination, and can be directly ingested by Prometheus. These are especially useful for keeping tabs on the health and connectivity of subnet routers, and we think they’ll be an immediate upgrade for users that rely on those, such as users with site-to-site network configurations or teams using Tailscale with Kubernetes. - Video: Installing Tailscale on macOS
If you’re installing Tailscale on macOS, the best way to do it is through what we call the “standalone variant”. But the standalone variant is just one of three official versions available for macOS. In this post — and the accompanying video — we’ll discuss all three options, and when you may want to wander off the beaten path. - Tailscale crossword: Any port in a storm
The holiday season includes a little bonus holiday for the cruciverbalists out there: December 21 is National Crossword Puzzle Day. To mark the holiday we published a new Tailscale crossword puzzle, which is just as good a month later.
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Community Highlights
- Project Bob:“Avionics Pods”
A team that focuses on “great execution on dumb hobbies” is building a pair of autonomous oceancraft that will livestream an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. The drones will be connected through Starlink and Tailscale, and documented in build log. - Dorian Monnier: “Tailscale LocalAPI”
This blog post describes some spelunking into an internal Tailscale API in order to reproduce the behavior in our golink application. Namely, to authenticate connecting Tailscale users and give them access based on roles defined in Tailscale ACL. - “I Developed a Minimalist Linux Distro with Tailscale Built-In”
From the Tailscale subreddit, a description of “Sbnb Linux, a minimalist Linux distribution” designed “to boot bare-metal servers and establish remote connectivity effortlessly using Tailscale.”
Upcoming webinars and workshops
- Simplifying Network Access: Secure Modern Connectivity with Tailscale
January 28, 2025
Join a Tailscale solutions engineer and alliance manager for this webinar on simplifying network access without compromising security—and even enhancing your security posture when connecting to distributed infrastructure like AWS. - Zero Trust webinar series
February 5, 2025
A fundamental part of the zero-trust process is creating secure, encrypted connections between all your devices and servers. We will walk you through building a plan for implementing those connections no matter what kind of fleet of devices you use or where your servers are hosted.
Tailscale IRL
The Tailscale team is hitting the road! Come see us IRL at any of the upcoming following industry events:
- Fosdem
Brussels, Belgium | February 1 - Grafana ObservabilityCON on the Road
San Francisco, CA | February 25
Chicago, IL | March 11 - Scale22X
Pasadena, CA | March 6-9 - DevOps Live
London, UK | March 12-13 - DevOps Days Chicago
Chicago, IL | March 19 - KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU
London, UK | April 1-4 - RSAC Conference
San Fransisco, CA | April 28 - May 1
🚀Are you building something cool or exciting using Tailscale? We love hearing about how our customers use Tailscale for their personal setups or at the workplace. We want to share these examples with the broader Tailscale community. If interested, fill out this form, and we will share your experience in an upcoming newsletter.
Parker Higgins
