Enable connection between 2 enterprise instances without sending data

[pc1]

I created a new splunk enterprise instance in which I want to connect to my already pre-existing main enterprise instance with the bulk of our data. The intention of having 2 is so I can track the heartbeat messages between each server to one another to alert when one or the other goes down. I already have the new instance connected to the old one through outputs.conf - and this gives me the ability to search for its heartbeat logs in index=_internal. However, connecting the main original instance to the new one is a different story. I have it forwarding to the new instance the same way, using outputs.conf. However, I believe that this is too much for the new instance to handle as it is a ton of data (which i don't even want to go there). Is there a way that I can have it establish the connection so I can monitor for heartbeats, but not send any data? Perhaps what settings can I tweak that disable the sending of anything but keep that connection between the two - without turning off indexing on the new instance so I am able to monitor and alert when the old instance stops sending heartbeats when it goes offline. 

[richgalloway · Accepted solution]

Don't have the two systems forward to each other - it won't work.

I haven't tried it myself, but you may have luck setting up each system as a search peer to the other.  Go to Settings->Distributed Search and click "Add new".  This allows each system to search what is stored on the other without having to send the raw data between them.