Do heavy forwarders listen to data from devices or collect data by contacting them?

[splunkreal]

Example: are snmp devices sending data to heavy forwarder, or is the HF connecting to devices to get syslog data? Thanks.

[lycollicott]

Heavy forwarders basically just listen. (They do not connect except in very specific circumstances such as if you have the dbConnect app installed to run queries on databases.)

[gcusello · Accepted solution]

Heavy forwrder receives always data with the only exception of local data and some kind of scripts.
About snmp, you have to install an app (https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/1537) or something else that writes snmp traps on filesystem.
Bye.
Giuseppe

[gfreitas]

To get snmp data to splunk, install this add-on on the HF: https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/1537/
You can also setup your syslog servers to send data to your HF as well, just setup a UDP receiving port.