Is it possible to use one deployment server instance as a deployment client??

[somesoni2]

I have multiple environments configured with Splunk (Say DEV, Testing,UAT and PROD). My DEV environment has one Search Head, one Job Server and one Deployment Server instance (one Indexer) as well. All Splunk development is happening on DEV. I am creating the tar file in DEV (Deployment server instance) and pushing it to other instances (Search Head, Job Server) in DEV. I have some utility apps which needs to be deployed to Deployment server instance also (which are useful in deployment). These utility apps are configured manually in DEV environment. Now the same apps have to be deployed on Deployment server instance of other environments.
Is it possible to make one deployment server instance (Say for Testing and UAT) to receive apps from another deployment server (DEV deployment server), so that I can avoid manual installation of these utility apps?

Also, is it possible to deploy to a directory other then $Splunk$/etc/apps?

[aholzer · Accepted solution]

Yes it is possible. Simply configure the "deploymentClient.conf" on the receiving server.

Yes you can write to a different directory, just define the "targetRepositoryLocation" in the serverClass.conf. See the documentation: http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/5.0.3/admin/Serverclassconf

[aholzer]

It's important to note that you shouldn't make a deployment server a client of itself. But otherwise what you are trying to do should work fine.

[jan_fredrik_lev]

Why not? Apps you intend to deploy reside in etc/deployment-apps and they end up in etc/apps where they get picked up again by splunkd. I don't think there will be any conflicts, unless I'm missing something?

[aholzer]

@jan.fredrik.leversund,

Port conflicts. If you have the deployment server deploy to itself it will try to push and receive on the same port, causing problems. It actually locks out all other deployment client from being able to communicate with the deployment server on that port.

This used to be true a year ago... There have been several releases since then, they may have fixed that, but I doubt it. Even if they did fix it, it's definitely not best practice to do so.

Hope this helps

[jizzmaster]

This seems to be what I am experiencing as I'm trying to make a deployment server a client of itself. It's a shame. Because you can SSH as a client to the same system that you have an SSH server on. It would make administration of a Splank environment easier if this were possible. If anyone figures out how to hack their way around this functionality, please post it.