What is the composition of a Splunk indexer cluster?

A Splunk indexer cluster is composed of multiple indexers that work together in a coordinated manner to ensure data redundancy, high availability, and enhanced performance. By combining the processing capabilities of several indexers, the cluster can handle large volumes of data and provide a fault-tolerant environment. This means that if one indexer goes down, the remaining indexers can continue to process and serve data without interruption, ensuring that the system remains resilient and reliable.

The collaborative nature of multiple indexers in a cluster also enables load balancing. Incoming data is distributed across the indexers, which improves indexing speed and search performance as requests can be handled in parallel. In a well-architected indexer cluster, the data is replicated among the member indexers, providing redundancy and allowing for data recovery in the event of hardware or software failures.

This architecture contrasts with setups where there might be just a single indexer instance or multiple indexers working independently, which lack the coordination and benefits of shared responsibility. Additionally, having an isolated indexer for each data source would not take advantage of the clustering capabilities available in Splunk, leading to inefficiencies and challenges in managing data consistency and availability.