Splunk® Enterprise

Managing Indexers and Clusters of Indexers

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.

Enable the indexer cluster master node

Before reading this topic, read Indexer cluster deployment overview.

A cluster has one, and only one, master node. The master node coordinates the activities of the peer nodes. It does not itself store or replicate data (aside from its own internal data).

Important: A master node cannot do double duty as a peer node or a search node. The Splunk Enterprise instance that you enable as master node must perform only that single indexer cluster role. In addition, the master cannot share a machine with a peer. Under certain limited circumstances, however, the master instance can handle a few other lightweight functions. See "Additional roles for the master node".

You must enable the master node as the first step in deploying a cluster, before setting up the peer nodes.

The procedure in this topic explains how to use Splunk Web to enable a master node. You can also enable a master in two other ways:

Important: This topic explains how to enable a master for a single-site cluster only. If you plan to deploy a multisite cluster, see "Configure multisite indexer clusters with server.conf".

Enable the master

To enable an indexer as the master node:

1. Click Settings in the upper right corner of Splunk Web.

2. In the Distributed environment group, click Indexer clustering.

3. Select Enable indexer clustering.

4. Select Master node and click Next.

5. There are a few fields to fill out:

  • Replication Factor.The replication factor determines how many copies of data the cluster maintains. The default is 3. For more information on the replication factor, see Replication factor. Be sure to choose the right replication factor now. It is inadvisable to increase the replication factor later, after the cluster contains significant amounts of data.
  • Search Factor. The search factor determines how many immediately searchable copies of data the cluster maintains. The default is 2. For more information on the search factor, see Search factor. Be sure to choose the right search factor now. It is inadvisable to increase the search factor later, once the cluster has significant amounts of data.
  • Security Key. This is the key that authenticates communication between the master and the peers and search heads. The key must be the same across all cluster nodes. The value that you set here must be the same that you subsequently set on the peers and search heads as well.
  • Cluster Label. You can label the cluster here. The label is useful for identifying the cluster in the monitoring console. See Set cluster labels in Monitoring Splunk Enterprise.

6. Click Enable master node.

The message appears, "You must restart Splunk for the master node to become active. You can restart Splunk from Server Controls."

7. Click Go to Server Controls. This takes you to the Settings page where you can initiate the restart.

Important: When the master starts up for the first time, it will block indexing on the peers until you enable and restart the full replication factor number of peers. Do not restart the master while it is waiting for the peers to join the cluster. If you do, you will need to restart the peers a second time.

View the master dashboard

After the restart, log back into the master and return to the Clustering page in Splunk Web. This time, you see the master clustering dashboard. For information on the dashboard, see "View the master dashboard".

Perform additional configuration

For information on post-deployment master node configuration, see "Master configuration overview".

Last modified on 15 September, 2020
System requirements and other deployment considerations for indexer clusters   Enable the peer nodes

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, 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

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