Ways you can configure Splunk software

Splunk software maintains its configuration information in a set of configuration files. You can configure Splunk by using any (or all!) of these methods:

• Use Splunk Web.
• Use Splunk's Command Line Interface (CLI) commands.
• Edit Splunk's configuration files directly.
• Use App setup screens that use the Splunk REST API to update configurations.

All of these methods change the contents of the underlying configuration files. You may find different methods handy in different situations.

Use Splunk Web

You can perform most common configuration tasks in Splunk Web. Splunk Web runs by default on port 8000 of the host on which it is installed:

• If you're running Splunk on your local machine, the URL to access Splunk Web is http://localhost:8000.
• If you're running Splunk on a remote machine, the URL to access Splunk Web is http://<hostname>:8000, where <hostname> is the name of the machine Splunk is running on.

Administration menus can be found under Settings in the Splunk Web menu bar. Most tasks in the Splunk documentation set are described for Splunk Web. For more information about Splunk Web, see Meet Splunk Web.

Edit configuration files

Most of Splunk's configuration information is stored in .conf files. These files are located under your Splunk installation directory (usually referred to in the documentation as $SPLUNK_HOME) under /etc/system. In most cases you can copy these files to a local directory and make changes to these files with your preferred text editor.

Before you begin editing configuration files, read "About configuration files".

Use Splunk CLI

Many configuration options are available via the CLI. These options are documented in the CLI chapter in this manual. You can also get CLI help reference with the help command while Splunk is running:

./splunk help

For more information about the CLI, refer to "About the CLI" in this manual. If you are unfamiliar with CLI commands, or are working in a Windows environment, you should also check out Differences between *nix and Windows in Splunk operations.

Setup pages for an app

Developers can create setup pages for an app that allow users to set configurations for that app without editing the configuration files directly. Setup pages make it easier to distribute apps to different environments, or to customize an app for a particular usage.

Setup pages use Splunk's REST API to manage the app's configuration files.

For more information about setup pages, refer to Enable app configuration with setup pages in Splunk Cloud Platform or Splunk Enterprise on the Splunk Developer Portal.

Managing a distributed environment

The Splunk deployment server provides centralized management and configuration for distributed environments. You can use it to deploy sets of configuration files or other content to groups of Splunk instances across the enterprise.

For information about managing deployments, refer to the "Updating Splunk Components" manual.