Splunk® Enterprise

Forwarding Data

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Splunk Enterprise version 7.1 is no longer supported as of October 31, 2020. See the Splunk Software Support Policy for details. For information about upgrading to a supported version, see How to upgrade Splunk Enterprise.
This documentation does not apply to the most recent version of Splunk® Enterprise. For documentation on the most recent version, go to the latest release.
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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 instance that performs the forwarding is called a forwarder.

There are several types of forwarders. See Types of forwarders to learn about each of them. To enable forwarding, see Enable forwarding on a Splunk Enterprise instance

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

Installation instructions

If you already know about forwarders and want the instructions on how to install them, see:

Sample forwarding layout

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

30 admin13 forwardreceive-dataforward 60.png

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 topologies. You can build environments to handle functions like data consolidation, load balancing, and data routing.

Learn more about forwarding and receiving

Last modified on 18 May, 2022
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Types of forwarders

This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Enterprise: 7.1.0, 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 7.1.3, 7.1.4, 7.1.5, 7.1.6, 7.1.7, 7.1.8, 7.1.9, 7.1.10, 7.2.0, 7.2.1, 7.2.2, 7.2.3, 7.2.4, 7.2.5, 7.2.6, 7.2.7, 7.2.8, 7.2.9, 7.2.10, 7.3.0, 7.3.1, 7.3.2, 7.3.3, 7.3.4, 7.3.5, 7.3.6, 7.3.7, 7.3.8, 7.3.9, 8.0.0, 8.0.1, 8.0.2, 8.0.3, 8.0.4, 8.0.5, 8.0.6, 8.0.7, 8.0.8, 8.0.9, 8.0.10, 8.1.0, 8.1.1, 8.1.2, 8.1.3, 8.1.4, 8.1.5, 8.1.6, 8.1.7, 8.1.8, 8.1.9, 8.1.10, 8.1.11, 8.1.12, 8.1.13, 8.1.14, 8.2.0, 8.2.1, 8.2.2, 8.2.3, 8.2.4, 8.2.5, 8.2.6


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