How can i exclude search peers by default in distributed search?

[sonicZ]

We have multiple splunk servers accessed by two central search heads, and some of these splunk servers are spread out geographically.
Sometimes we get latency between some of the search peers and most of the time we are not searching these servers(for example our Australian splunk indexers)

Default behaviour in distsearch.conf seems to look for all search peers unless specified with a NOT splunk_server = is there a way to change the default to not include some indexers so you have to explicitly name them ?

Checking in the spec file i see an interesting line, would this do the trick?

disabled_servers = <comma separated list of servers>
 * A list of configured but disabled search peers.

[Damien_Dallimor]

That is certainly my understanding of the usage of the "disabled_servers" property in distsearch.conf

You can also disable the search peer via Splunk Web :

Manager -> Distributed search -> Search peers -> Status : enabled|disabled

[sonicZ]

Thanks Damien i forgot about disabling them in the search peers section, it looks like when they are disabled you cannot search on them explicitly though with splunk_server="name" would be nice to have that option to search splunk indexers on demand but keep them disabled a percentage of the time.