Collecting logs from the fortified network over the firewall with the forwarders

[chronic_splunke]

Greetings, a beginner Splunk administrator here.

So I have the case where within my network there are two isolated network zones. One such that could be classified as intranet-oriented or less fortified one, and the other highly fortified with servers holding records needed for eventual collection.

Communication between them occurs through the firewall. Intranet zone holds the crucial indexer.

How could I collect logs from the fortified zone over the firewall between these zones with Splunk forwarder while not opening too many network ports or compromising the network in any way.

From your experience, I'd like to hear several ways in approaching this.

[gcusello · Accepted solution]

Hi chronic_splunker,
if you want to reduce the opening ports, you could put two Heavy Forwarders in each network that concentrate logs from all universal forwarders of own network and then forward them to indexers.
In this way you have to open only 9997 port from these four HF to Indexers.
To manage UFs you can insert a Deployment Server in each network to deploy configurations to all own UFs.
If you have less than 50 UF you can use one of the HF od each network as Deployment Server.

Bye.
Giuseppe