Installation

Splunk Licensing Procedure

clyde772
Communicator

A simple licensing question.

let's assume the environment is like this:

  1. There are 2 different indexers installed [ Indexer 1 ]------Distributed Search Link---------[ Indexer 2 ]

Q. In this case above, do I need 2 different indexer license / or can I have 1 large indexer license seeded into both indexers?

  1. [ Search Head ]----Distributed Search Link----[ Indexer ]

Q. In the case above, Does the search head need a license too? Is there such thing as search head license?

Thanks for your help in advance~!

Tags (1)

delink
Communicator

Splunk is licensed by how much data you ingest daily. There is no specific licensing for individual servers. You should designate one Splunk instance, often a search head or a deployment server, as the license master and install your Enterprise license onto it. In all other Splunk Enterprise instances, you should point at that server's splunkd port for remote license. This can be accomplished by distributing the correct server.conf snippet from the deployment server, or through manual configuration in splunkweb.

0 Karma

kbecker
Communicator

You will need Splunk support to issue you three licenses (indexer 1, indexer 2, search head 3).

jrodman
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

A typical choice for a search head license is the splunk-forwarder.license which is a 1MB enterprise license that you are welcome to use on any search heads and forwarders. This is in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc, just waiting for you to copy/symlink it to splunk.license.

0 Karma

gkanapathy
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

search head generally doesn't need a license, since it's not indexing data. (Internal and summary data doesn't count against license.)

0 Karma
Got questions? Get answers!

Join the Splunk Community Slack to learn, troubleshoot, and make connections with fellow Splunk practitioners in real time!

Meet up IRL or virtually!

Join Splunk User Groups to connect and learn in-person by region or remotely by topic or industry.

Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Data Management Digest – September 2026

    Welcome to the September 2026 edition of Data Management Digest! September brought a fresh wave of ...

Federated Search for CloudWatch Unified Data Store Is Generally Available

As organizations modernize their cloud environments, AWS workloads generate more security, operational, and ...

Announcing Modern Navigation: A New Era of Splunk User Experience

We are excited to introduce the Modern Navigation feature in the Splunk Platform, available to both cloud and ...