Indexer cluster configuration overview

To configure the indexer cluster, you configure the individual nodes. You perform two types of configuration:

• Configuration of the behavior of the cluster itself.
• Configuration of the cluster's indexing and search behavior.

The current chapter provides an overview of the ways to configure cluster behavior specifically.

Configuration of each node type

The settings for each node type handle different aspects of the cluster:

• Manager node. Configuration of overall cluster behavior.
• Peer node. Configuration of individual peer node and cluster indexing behavior.
• Search head. Configuration of individual search head and search behavior in an indexer cluster.

See the chapters on specific node types for information on configuring each node type. The chapter "Configure the peers," for example, includes some topics on configuring the peer cluster node settings and other topics that describe how to configure the indexes that a peer uses.

Methods for configuring cluster behavior

Initial configuration of each node occurs during deployment. If you need to change the configuration of a cluster node post-deployment, you have these choices:

• You can edit the configuration from the node's dashboard in Splunk Web, as described in "Configure the indexer cluster with the dashboards".

• You can directly edit the [clustering] stanza in the node's server.conf file. See "Configure the indexer cluster with server.conf" for details. To configure some advanced settings, you must edit this file.

• You can use the CLI. See "Configure and manage the indexer cluster with the CLI" for details.