About forwarding and receiving

You can forward data from one Splunk Enterprise instance to another Splunk Enterprise instance or even to a non-Splunk system. The Splunk Enterprise instance that performs the forwarding is typically a smaller footprint version of Splunk Enterprise, called a forwarder.

A Splunk Enterprise instance that receives data from one or more forwarders is called a receiver. The receiver is usually a Splunk Enterprise indexer, but can also be another forwarder.

Sample forwarding layout

This diagram shows three forwarders sending data to a single receiver (an indexer), which then indexes the data and makes it available for searching:

Forwarders represent a much more robust solution for data forwarding than raw network feeds, with their capabilities for:

• Tagging of metadata (source, source type, and host)
• Configurable buffering
• Data compression
• SSL security
• Use of any available network ports

The forwarding and receiving capability makes possible all sorts of interesting Splunk Enterprise topologies to handle functions like data consolidation, load balancing, and data routing.

Learn more about forwarding and receiving

• To learn more about the fundamentals of Splunk Enterprise distributed deployment, see the Distributed Deployment Manual.
• For more information on the types of deployment topologies that you can create with forwarders, see Forwarder deployment topologies" in this manual.
• To learn about what intermediate forwarding is, see "Intermediate forwarding."
• To learn about the different types of forwarders available, see "Types of forwarders."