Splunk® Enterprise

Distributed Search

Splunk Enterprise version 7.2 is no longer supported as of April 30, 2021. 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.

Use a load balancer with the search head pool

You will probably want to run a load balancer in front of your search heads. That way, users can access the pool of search heads through a single interface, without needing to specify a particular one.

Another reason for using a load balancer is to ensure access to search artifacts and results if one of the search heads goes down. Ordinarily, RSS and email alerts provide links to the search head where the search originated. If that search head goes down (and there's no load balancer), the artifacts and results become inaccessible. However, if you've got a load balancer in front, you can set the alerts so that they reference the load balancer instead of a particular search head.

Configure the load balancer

There are a couple issues to note when selecting and configuring the load balancer:

  • The load balancer must employ layer-7 (application-level) processing.
  • Configure the load balancer so that user sessions are "sticky" or "persistent". This ensures that the user remains on a single search head throughout their session.

Generate alert links to the load balancer

To generate alert links to the load balancer, you must edit alert_actions.conf:

1. Copy alert_actions.conf from a search head to the appropriate app directory in the shared storage location. In most cases, this will be /<path_to_shared_storage>/etc/apps/search/local.

2. Edit the hostname attribute to point to the load balancer: 

hostname = <proxy host>:<port>

For details, see alert_actions.conf in the Admin manual.

The alert links should now point to the load balancer, not the individual search heads.

Last modified on 02 August, 2019
Create a search head pool   Other pooling operations

This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Enterprise: 7.0.0, 7.0.1, 7.0.2, 7.0.3, 7.0.4, 7.0.5, 7.0.6, 7.0.7, 7.0.8, 7.0.9, 7.0.10, 7.0.11, 7.0.13, 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

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