Forwarder compatibility

[Twagner79]

Hello everyone, I hope you all are doing well.   I have been tasked to update Splunk enterprise to the 8.2.1 version and the forwarders to 8.1.4. Does anyone know if this upgrade is going to effect the compatibility for legacy systems? I am worries that RHEL 6 with 7.x version systems will have issues. Just wondering if anyone has had this problem at all. Thank you!

[richgalloway]

We need to know more about your environment.  What are the "legacy systems"?  If they're Splunk then won't they be upgraded to 8.2.1?  What compatibilities are you concerned about?

[Twagner79]

The system is not connected to the internet so it does not get automatically updated. The current systems that are legacy are rhel 6. I am just afraid that upgrading the forwarders on these systems from 7.x to 8.2.1 will make the forwarders not compatible with the OS if that makes sense 

[richgalloway]

The OS compatibility chart is at https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.1/Installation/Systemrequirements

[Twagner79]

I appreciate that thank you. Its not quite what I am looking for. The splunk enterprise instance is fine on the server its on, itll upgrade and communicate with the upgraded windows and rhel 7 forwarders fine. It is the RHEL 6 system working with the updated forwarder that I am concerned about, it works fine with the 6x and 7x forwarder version just fine, it is the 8x forwarder that I am worried wont work. Hopefully that is more understandable, I dont mean to be vague  

[richgalloway · Accepted solution]

It's not the RHEL version you should be looking at, but rather the kernel version.  Kernel version compatibility is in the chart referenced above.  RHEL6 should include a supported kernel .

[Twagner79]

Thank you again for your help! looks like we are good to go. Happy Splunking 🙂