Migration steps to upgrade from 4.3.2 to 6.1 on Windows?

[jchan2014]

My environment has Splunk 4.3.2 installed with a standalone index server on the Window platform. My plan is to upgrade the version to new Splunk 6.1 with cluster index, if possible with the index replicated from the old version to a new version.

I couldn't find any guide which is clearly stating how to do this on Windows, and the online documentation guide is like a different document piece by piece information but didn't clearly guide through the sequence of the steps to migrate.

Should I migrate on the existing old hardware to version 6.0, then set up another new machine with 6.0 and migrate the program file over to upgrade to 6.1? But if using this method my license update to old server while the new server is up then how to transfer the license and the index server migration as well? My brain is like very congested on not sure how to come out plan in sequenced steps for this migration.

I am very new in Splunk, I hope a Splunk expert in this portal can give me some guidance to help me for this migration.

I appreciate your expertise and kind advice to help me.

[sravanysr]

You cannot upgrade splunk enterprise directly from 4.3.2 to 6.1.x version. You have to upgrade the splunk from 4.3.x to 5.x or 6.0 first, and then upgrade to 6.1.x.

upgrade indexer server from 4.3.2 to 5.x or 6.0
then upgrade forwarders connected to this server to 6.1.x
then upgrade indexer from 5.x or 6.0 to 6.1.x

What Windows OS version you are using ?