Universal Forwarder

[nikhilmehra79]

Hi, I have a scenario where i need to deploy a forwarder to collect data from a Zone which may not be allowed to reach directly to zone where my indexers are, i have been looking for a bridge to get my forwarded data to indexers.
Q: i was reading a Universal forwarder can forward the data from One Universal Forwarder to Another? does it work well?
If yes it is recommended? or any other option?
Q. If answer to both is yes do they talk on port 9997? any reference to doc?

[yannK · Accepted solution]

You can chain Universal Forwarders (UF) to Universal forwarders, or chain UF to heavy forwarders (HF), then forward to indexers. The method will be to open a splunktcp listening port on the intermediary servers.

see http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.0.2/Forwarding/Forwarderdeploymenttopologies#Intermedi...
and
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Forwarding/Setupforwardingandreceiving

Remarks :

• Using a heavy forwarder will be to process the events at one point ( to filter, parse, redirect with rules, using ssl forwarding for unsecure networks ...)
• If you are using a forwarder to concentrate, you may want to check the "thruput" limit to avoid bottleneck.

example :
UF -> IDX
UF -> UF -> IDX
UF -> HF -> IDX