Splunk® Enterprise

Admin Manual

Splunk Enterprise version 8.2 is no longer supported as of September 30, 2023. 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.

Configure a license master

This topic discusses configuring a Splunk Enterprise instance as a license master (LM.) 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 LM 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'll want to manage their license access from a central location.To do this, you must configure one instance as the LM. You then configure each of the remaining Splunk Enterprise instances as license slaves to the LM.

Choose the instance to serve as the license master

The license master (LM) 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

A license master (LM) must be an equal or higher version than its license slaves.

For example:

  • A 8.0 LM is compatible with 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0 slaves.
  • A 7.2 LM is compatible with 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2 slaves.

Compatibility is significant at the major/minor release level, but not at the maintenance level. For example, a 7.2 LM is not compatible with a 7.3 license slave, because the 7.2 is a lower minor release level than 7.3. However, a 7.3.1 LM is compatible with a 7.3.3 license slave, despite the lower maintenance release level of the LM.

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.
  4. Verify the license capacity usage and indexing volume the next day. See About the Splunk Enterprise license usage report view.
Last modified on 10 August, 2021
Allocate license volume   Install a license

This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Enterprise: 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, 8.1.0, 8.1.1, 8.1.2, 8.1.3, 8.1.4, 8.1.5, 8.1.6, 8.1.7, 8.1.8, 8.1.9, 8.1.10, 8.1.11, 8.1.12, 8.1.13, 8.1.14, 8.2.0, 8.2.1, 8.2.2, 8.2.3, 8.2.4, 8.2.5, 8.2.6, 8.2.7, 8.2.8, 8.2.9, 8.2.10, 8.2.11, 8.2.12


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