Splunk® Enterprise

Admin Manual

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Splunk Enterprise version 7.3 is no longer supported as of October 22, 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.
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Configure a license master

This topic discusses configuring a Splunk Enterprise instance as a license master. Before you proceed, review the topic Allocate license volume for general information about allocating license volume across Splunk Enterprise instances.

If you have a single Splunk Enterprise instance, it serves as its own license manager once you install an Enterprise license on it. You do not need to further configure it as a license master.

If you have multiple Splunk Enterprise instances, you usually want to manage their license access from a central location.To do this, you must configure one instance as the license master. You then designate each of the remaining Splunk Enterprise instances as license slaves of the license master.

Choose the instance to serve as the license master

The license master does not usually need to run on a dedicated Splunk Enterprise instance. Instead, you can colocate it on an instance that is also performing other tasks:

For a general discussion of management component colocation, see Components that help to manage your deployment in the Distributed Deployment Manual.

License master and slave version compatibility

Compatibility between the master and its slaves requires that their versions follow all of these rules:

  • A license master must be of an equal or later version than its license slaves.
  • The master version must be at least 6.1.
  • The slave version must be at least 6.0.

For example:

  • A 7.1 master is compatible with 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 7.0, and 7.1 slaves.
  • A 6.5 master is compatible with 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5 slaves.

Compatibility is significant at the major/minor release level, but not at the maintenance level. For example, a 6.3 license master is not compatible with a 6.4 license slave, because the 6.3 license master is at a lower minor release level than the 6.4 license slave. However, a 6.3.1 license master is compatible with a 6.3.3 license slave, despite the lower maintenance release level of the license master.

Configure a license master

To configure the license master:

  1. Install Enterprise licenses. See Install a license.
  2. Configure license slaves. See Configure a license slave.
  3. Create pools to allocate the installed license. See Create or edit a license pool.

Now you can manage your licenses from the license master.

Last modified on 16 November, 2020
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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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