How to connect search head to new indexer in a distributed environment (beginner here)

[maxguttsait]

Hi all,

Currently, our Splunk dev environment consists of a standalone instance that is both our indexer and search head.
What I am trying to do is set up a new search head that will connect to our production environment indexer, essentially mimicking production in development. I have a brand new instance that I just got set up that will act as a standalone search head.
From here, would I add the indexer as a search peer in a distributed search?
I'm only about a week into learning Splunk, so this stuff definitely confuses me a bit which is why I decided to ask on here.

Please let me know what you guys think is the best solution here.

[sandeepmakkena]

Use the CLI
To add a search peer, run this command from the search head:

splunk add search-server ://: -auth : -remoteUsername -remotePassword

Note the following:

1. is the URI scheme: "http" or "https".
2. is the host name or IP address of the search peer's host machine.
3. is the management port of the search peer.
4. Use the -auth flag to provide credentials for the search head.

5. Use the -remoteUsername and -remotePassword flags for the credentials for the search peer. The
   remote credentials must be for an admin-level user on the search peer.

   For example:

   splunk add search-server https://192.168.1.1:8089 -auth admin:password -remoteUsername admin -remotePassword passremote
   You must run this command for each search peer that you want to add.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.2/DistSearch/Configuredistributedsearch

You can refer to the above link.

Hope this help, Thanks !

[richgalloway]

You have it right. Go to Settings->Distributed search and add the existing indexer as a search peer.
Keep in mind that every search run on the two search heads takes up a CPU on the indexer so be careful not to allow Dev to affect the performance of Prod by running a lot of searches and using up resources on the indexer.