topic "High Availablity" options for License Server? in Installation

"High Availablity" options for License Server?

Ricapar — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:42:25 GMT

Most things in Splunk nowadays seem to be good at scaling outwards - multiple indexers, pooled search heads, etc.

One piece I haven't seen any HA option for is for the License Server/Master.

Right now my disaster-recovery plan in the event of losing the license server is to configure one of the other Splunk nodes as a License Master, and to flip the DNS alias they're all configured with to point to the new box.

However, that's still pretty barebones compared to the automatic nature of Splunk's other components.

Is there an HA option for the license server that I'm not aware of?

Re: "High Availablity" options for License Server?

bmacias84 — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:57:04 GMT

Currently there is no HA option for the License Server. It would be nice to have HA for the License Server (maybe a election process if primary is down). I know you do have decent amount of time before you server will complain about violating license usage.

Re: "High Availablity" options for License Server?

MuS — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 18:03:02 GMT

Hi Ricapar

like bmacias84 said there is no build in HA option for License Server.

But you can achieve some HA if you setup two VM's as License Master with your License file, then setup a DNS round robin for both License Master and access the License Master over the DNS from all other Splunk Servers.

This way you will always have at least one LM reachable, well as long as your network is up and running 😉

hope this helps, MuS

Re: "High Availablity" options for License Server?

bmacias84 — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 18:23:55 GMT

Technical I believe that would violate your licensing. You could set up a vm with Fault tolerance if your using VMware. Or set up two licences server behind a load balance with active passive.

Re: "High Availablity" options for License Server?

MuS — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 07:23:00 GMT

well speaking for 4.x it works, because this is what I did recently

Re: "High Availablity" options for License Server?

yoho — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:09:58 GMT

It's not because it's working that it does not violate your license..

Re: "High Availablity" options for License Server?

Drainy — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:21:01 GMT

Well, actually that depends on your conversation with your sales rep. Go and have a chat with them 🙂

Re: "High Availablity" options for License Server?

Ricapar — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:08:41 GMT

Wouldn't this technically double your license? Assuming the round robin DNS goes 50/50 more or less.. each license server would only see half of your actual usage.

Splunk (app) might not see it as a violation of your license.. but Splunk (company) might not be thrilled.

Re: "High Availablity" options for License Server?

yoho — Thu, 15 May 2014 12:07:56 GMT

Indeed, that was the point. You also risk some troubles if, in the future versions, splunk implements a way to forbid this (there are multiple ways to do this rather easily).