Do I need to install Splunk Enterprise to be able to remotely manage it using the CLI?

[cpattonj]

I'm a little confused by the instructions for managing a Splunk instance remotely... it mentions using a command like ./splunk or in windows an executable like splunk.exe... is it expected that we have Splunk already installed on the machine we want to remotely manage from?

If so, what's the deal with having the free version vs. paid? I have the paid version on one server but I don't want to have to pay just to be able to remotely manage it from my local machine.

[lguinn2]

If you want to use the CLI to manage a remote machine, you must have Splunk installed on the local machine. (Otherwise, you wouldn't have the CLI.)

You must also have Splunk on the remote machine - otherwise, what would you be managing?

I would think that you could use the free version of Splunk on the local machine. But if you can't, that's no big deal. Just make the local copy of Splunk a "license slave" to the copy of Splunk that has the license.

While you can use the CLI to manage a remote machine, is there a reason that you can't either (1) login to the command line on the machine that you want to manage or (2) simply use the web interface on the remote machine?