Welcome to Splunk Enterprise 9.4

Splunk Enterprise 9.4 was released on December 16, 2024.

If you are new to Splunk Enterprise, read the Splunk Enterprise Overview.

For system requirements information, see the Installation Manual.

Before proceeding, review the Known Issues for this release.

Planning to upgrade from an earlier version?

If you plan to upgrade to this version from an earlier version of Splunk Enterprise, read How to upgrade Splunk Enterprise in the Installation Manual for information you need to know before you upgrade.

See About upgrading: READ THIS FIRST for specific migration tips and information that might affect you when you upgrade.

The Deprecated and removed features topic lists computing platforms, browsers, and features for which Splunk has deprecated or removed support in this release.

What's New in 9.4

New feature, enhancement, or change	Description
Deployment server version 9.4	Deployment Server provides a centralized location and user-interface to manage, maintain, and troubleshoot all types of Splunk agents, such as the Universal Forwarder and the Heavy Forwarder. Deployment Server 9.4.0 provides the following new capabilities: Overview of the health and status of your agents A new UI with a shorter load time and updated user experience A11y compliance
Stats V1 removal	Version 1 of the stats command has been removed and replaced with version 2 of the stats command.
Enhancement to the foreach command	A new auto_collections mode has been added the foreach command. The auto_collections mode dynamically iterates over a JSON array or multivalue field depending on which element is present in the search. See foreach in the Search Reference.
Federated Search for Splunk: Metric indexes now supported as a new dataset type for federated searches	With this release, Federated Search for Splunk adds a new dataset type for standard mode federated searches: metric indexes. You can now run federated searches over metric index datasets. Additional error handling has been added to ensure that you apply event generating commands to event index datasets and apply metric generating commands to metric index datasets. This is a breaking change for previous federated searches of metric indexes. If you are upgrading from a previous version of the Splunk platform, you must define new federated indexes for metric index datasets. For more information about defining federated indexes that map to metric index datasets, see Map a federated index to a remote Splunk dataset in Federated Search. For more information about writing federated searches for metric index datasets, see Run federated searches over remote Splunk platform deployments in Federated Search.
Federated Search for Splunk: Support for eventcount across Standard and Transparent mode.	The eventcount command is now supported by Federated Search for Splunk. This support includes the option to have eventcount return event counts for indexes on remote Splunk platform deployments that are designated as federated providers. eventcount search results now include a provider column that identifies the federated providers that listed indexes belong to. For more information, see eventcount in the Search Reference.
Federated Search for Splunk: Standard mode federated search support for the mcatalog command.	The mcatalog command is now supported for standard mode federated searches. For more information, see the following topics: Run federated searches over remote Splunk platform deployments, in Federated Search. mcatalog, in the Search Reference.
Upgrade KV store server version from 4.2 to 7.0	Splunk Enterprise 9.4 requires that you upgrade to KV store server version 7.0. Your deployment automatically upgrades your KV store during your upgrade to Splunk Enterprise 9.4. This new server version includes security enhancements and improves the performance of your KV store. See Upgrade the KV store server version in the Admin manual to plan your upgrade.
Internal Library Settings	The Internal Library Settings page is removed. Deprecated libraries and unsupported hotlinked imports are restricted, and Splunk Cloud Platform no longer offers a self-service option to use them. For more information about Internal Library Settings, see Control access to jQuery and other internal libraries in the jQuery Upgrade Readiness manual.
Dashboard Studio enhancements	See What's new in Dashboard Studio.
SPL2-based application development	This version of Splunk Enterprise supports SPL2 via API, to help admins create powerful apps to gain more control over their ecosystem while allowing developers massive flexibility for the custom apps they can build. Admins and developers can use the API or the Splunk Extension for VS Code to create their apps. Admins and developers can ship SPL2 module files that define custom functions, views, data types, and more to curate resources within their application for users. Users can leverage these resources in the Splunk search bar to create dashboards and reports, by writing single-statement SPL2 searches. See Create SPL2-based apps in the Splunk Developer Guide on dev.splunk.com Admins can use SPL2 views with run-as-owner permissions. This applies special permissions on modules to execute views under a more privileged context, allowing multiple roles to access sensitive data with different levels of custom data masking. See Manage SPL2-based apps in the Splunk Enterprise Admin Manual.
Eval function enhancements for data type conversion and type testing	You can use the following new eval data type conversion functions to manipulate values in eval searches. toarray to convert a value to an array value. tobool to convert a value to a boolean value. todouble to convert a value to a double value. toint to convert a value to an integer value. tomv to convert a value to a multivalue. toobject to convert a value to the equivalent object value of the field, if any. json_entries to convert a value to an array of JSON objects with key and value fields. You can use the following new eval functions to return information about values in eval searches. isarray to test whether a value is an array value. isdouble to test whether a value is a double value. ismv to test whether a value is a multivalue. isobjectto test whether a value is an object. json_has_key_exact to test whether a JSON key is in a JSON object. For more information, see Common eval functions in the Splunk Enterprise Search Reference.
Eliminate SHC out-of-sync issues	Search head cluster (SHC) replication has been improved to reduce out-of-sync errors. Previously, large CSV lookup files that exceeded the 5GB file size limit could block replication and cause cluster members to go out of sync, often requiring a "destructive resync" to remediate. Now if a CSV lookup exceeds the lookup file size limit, the cluster automatically quarantines the lookup on the search head on which it is generated, without blocking replication of other objects. The splunkd health report shows the number of quarantined lookups and admins can run a search to get details on these lookups for remediation. For more information, see Quarantining large CSV lookup files in search head clusters in the Knowledge Manager Manual.
Workload management - Support for cgroups version 2	Workload management now supports Linux operating systems that use cgroups version 2. Splunk Enterprise 9.4 is enabled by default to automatically detect and switch to cgroups v2. For more information, see Configure cgroups v2 in Splunk Enterprise in Workload Management.
Automated rolling upgrade on a systemd-managed Splunk Enterprise instance	You can create a control hook that the splunk-rolling-upgrade app uses to stop the Splunk Enterprise instance before and start it after performing an automated rolling upgrade. Using the control hook, you can upgrade search head clusters and indexer clusters on a Splunk Enterprise instance managed by systemd. For more information see Create a custom control hook for upgrading search head clusters and Create a custom control hook for upgrading indexer clusters.
Support for persistent queues for Output queues with Splunk to Splunk (S2S) protocol.	Ability to leverage persistent queues on output queues to automatically fallback to disk and recover, in case of destination or network failure. Use cases are for collection purpose for remote Splunk deployment (intermittent connectivity or need to survive a long network outage) and/or cloning data to one or multiple Splunk destinations, via S2S protocol, with no data loss and minimal impact in case of destination unavailability.