managing multiple standalone splunk instances

[bkumarm]

I have about five standalone hosts that run Splunk Enterprise instances ( independent). They are used by different users for their own purposes. I don't want to setup a cluster.
I want to do the following:
1. Monitor the index usage on these hosts.
2. Monitor disk usage and alert based on preset limit
3. set periodic alert - example: after 3 months

is there any way to achieve this in a centralized host and generate usage reports?

thanks,
Bharath

[sbbadri]

Check out below link,

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.6.2/DMC/Configureindistributedmode

[esix_splunk · Accepted solution]

Building on what @adonio says, you can setup the MC (Management Console) on of the hosts. You then need to add all of the other members as search peers on the host with the MC. You can then go into the MC and configure the roles for each member, and monitor it via the prebuilt panels and alerts.

[bkumarm]

tried it ..MC webUI does not have any option to add members. should I use CLI? or any specific configuration?

[bkumarm]

I referred the MC documentation ad added search peers on one of the boxes. This is really awesome feature that provides useful reports on critical data.

[adonio]

use one of them to look at all the other 4 and search the _internal data
look at distributed search

[bkumarm]

did you mean I have to forward internal logs into one host? it may become a breakdown point.. because if I loose the host, the monitoring data would be gone ..correct?

[adonio]

you dont have to forward logs
pick 1 instance, navigate to settings (top right corner) -> click "Distributed search" -> click "Search Peers" -> click "add new" -> add all 4 splunk instances as peers.
you are all set