Getting Data In

Windows event logs - many remote

There are a number of ways to gather Windows event logs from large numbers of Windows machines. One way is by using Splunk's "Windows event logs remote" recipe to pull the logs from the machines into your Splunk instance. The other, faster, more scalable way, is to use Splunk's universal forwarder.

You set up the forwarder on the machines that are generating the desired event logs. Then, you point the forwarder at the Splunk indexer. The forwarder monitors the desired event logs on each machine, then forwards that data to the indexer, which then indexes it and makes it available for searching.

Using the universal forwarder is the most efficient way to get event logs from a large number of remote Windows machines.

There are two main steps:

1. Set up the forwarder on the remote machine and point it at the indexer. See this recipe: "Forwarders".

2. Set up the forwarder's inputs so that they event logs that you desire. You set up the inputs on the forwarder the same as if they were on a Splunk indexer. However, the forwarder has no Splunk Web, so you'll need to set up the inputs either with the command line interface (CLI), or by editing inputs.conf directly.

For information on setting up inputs to get Windows event logs, see "Monitor Windows event log data" in this manual. For additional information on setting up forwarders, see "Use forwarders" in this manual.