How do we upgrade all forwarders on Windows and Linux in our environment from Splunk 5.0.4 to 6.x?

[jkponnuri]

I am currently using Splunk 5.0.4 and trying to upgrade to Splunk 6.x along with all forwarders. How can I upgrade all Splunk forwarders on Windows and Linux servers in one shot? We have roughly 1000 forwarders. Any suggestions? Can I upgrade forwarders first to version 6 and later upgrade Splunk Enterprise to 6? Is that OK?

Thanks in advance...

[jkat54]

As for how to upgrade them... You'll need to write scripts that take into account the architecture of each os, among other variables.

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.2.0/Forwarding/UpgradetheWindowsforwarder
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.2.0/Forwarding/UpgradetheNixforwarder
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.1/installation/HowtoupgradeSplunk

For windows, i've used winrm and powershell remoting. For linux I've used everything from bash scripts to python.

As for compatabillity between versions:
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.2.0/Forwarding/Compatibilitybetweenforwardersandindexe...