Do you need to keep the same splunk.secret file on all the Indexer peers?

[sreejith2k2]

As per the Splunk doc on Deploy secure passwords across multiple servers the splunk.secret file will be automatically replicated by the Search Head captain during the initial cluster deployment.

Though Indexer cluster is entirely different to the Search Head Clustering and we have 50+ indexers in the multisite cluster, my queries are

1. Do you need to keep the same Splunk.secret file on all the Indexer peers.
   
2. Say, if we keep seperate splunk.secret on each indexer server and If we keep the plain text passwords in the server/inputs/outputs/authentication.conf files in the CyberArk, do we really need to worry on splunk.secret?

[naveencardinalh]

Yes, splunk.secret file should be same across all the cluster members.

[sreejith2k2]

Hi naveencardinalhealth, Thanks. I havent seen any documentation within the splunk docs. For SH Cluster, I do agree with you (https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Security/Deploysecurepasswordsacrossmultipleserv...) but for indexer i havent see any documentation.

[naveencardinalh]

You need to keep the same splunk.secret file in both indexers, shc layer, deployment server and HF's..

[teunlaan]

1) No you don't need to
2) you are OK, if you keep everything in plain text

[sreejith2k2]

2) you are OK, if you keep everything in plain text - but once the splunk is restarted, it will encrypt the passwords automatically.