Adding to what @richgalloway already said - remember than some options might simply be not available in specific situations. Many Splunk components will actually run without web interface enabled so in those cases you will obviously not be able to use it for upgrade. If your environment grows and you step into the clustering grounds the only way of installing apps (including upgrading) will be using clustering mechanisms (either pushing from deployer or cluster manager). Even with small-scale installation you can use deployment server to serve apps to your Splunk components. And that's actually a typical Splunk way of automating app install/upgrade. ... View more