Force deployment to clients?

[smisplunk]

Is it possible to force the deployment server to update its clients in a "push" style? According to the example listed here in the deployment docs, using the command

splunk reload deploy-server

should indicate to known clients that the class has been updated. Does this act like a "push"? Is there any delay in when the client will request the new configs?

[gkanapathy · Accepted solution]

This does not act as a push, and Deployment Server (as of 4.0) is always a client-initiated poll. What the command does it force the server to reload the configuration and content from the files currently on the filesystem, rather than what it read at the last reload. The next checkin from the client will occur at the regularly client-scheduled time (since it doesn't know anything about the reload), but at that time, it will receive updated information.

[kristian_kolb]

Perhaps restarting the client makes that happen. Unfortunately it seems like there is no 'splunk connect-to deployment-server' command. At any rate, you'd have to do it from the the forwarder (i.e. client) end. Restarting a forwarder will most likely only take a few seconds.

Other than that, I think you'd want to have the deployment clients check in fairly often, and I haven't (yet) come across an installation where changing the default value has been deemed necessary.

/k

[Glenn]

Is there any way to force the client to initiate a poll? Say your check in period was 1 day, but you don't want to wait for it to check in for an urgent change.