splunk-ansible

When configuring a search head, it’s possible that enable multi-cluster search. This enables the ability to search for data across a series of indexer clusters, whether they be located in different datacenters or different geographical regions.

For more information, see Splunk docs on multi-cluster search.

The Ansible playbooks provided in this repository offer this feature through the auxiliary_cluster_masters option in the default.yml variables. To enable this, modify this section of the default.yml to include a list of cluster masters responsible for brokering the indexer clusters:

splunk:
  ...
  cluster_master_url: master-primary.regionA.corp.net
  auxiliary_cluster_masters:
    - url: https://master-secondary.regionA.corp.net:8089
      pass4SymmKey: secretidxckey
    - url: https://master-tertiary.regionB.corp.net:8089
      pass4SymmKey: newsecretidxckey
  ...

Note that in the above, the search head being created must also set cluster_master_url. It is only possible to peer multiple indexer clusters when the search head has a primary indexer cluster to send its own internal logs and data to.

Each additional cluster master must also be given their own pass4SymmKey to enable authorization for this Splunk search head to connect and search over the various other clusters.

To confirm that the multi-cluster search works after Ansible has been completed, visit SplunkWeb on this search head and run the following query:

search index=_internal

If successful, you should see: