Why has support been removed in 6.5.0 for universal forwarders on Windows 7, and is there a workaround?

[nbowman]

I'm looking to upgrade from 6.4.1 to 6.5, and I came across this:

Windows 7 x86-32 & x86_64: Free/Trial and Universal Forwarder support has been removed.

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.5.0/ReleaseNotes/DeprecatedFeatures#Removed_platforms

Well, there goes my plans for 6.5, nearly all my Windows endpoints are Windows 7...

Anyone here make the jump to 6.5 with Windows 7 UF's?

[inventsekar]

You can keep the 6.4 UF's for some more time.
Or,
as I remember on some other posts here, maybe, UF 6.5 will get installed on Windows 7. The only issue is, the official support from splunk won't be available.

[lukejadamec]

Not I.

If Splunk does not support installation of the forwarder on Windows 7, then I'm not sure it is wise to find a way to force it.

On a side note, since security updates will be available for Windows 7 until about 2020, I wonder why Splunk stopped supporting it. Perhaps it is because Windows 7 tech support ended in 2015.

The workaround is, as @richgalloway noted, is to use 6.4.1 or older forwareders that do install.

[richgalloway]

Splunk 6.5 will work with 6.4.1 forwarders.