Using the search head pooling feature, it is possible to run multiple search head instances. The feature requires a share of some sort behind the servers acting as search heads, which effectively means they must be in the same data center. The setup looks essentially like the following diagram:
In short, the steps to configure the search are as follows:
- Mount the NFS volume on each search head
- Enable the pooling feature on each instance
- Copy the existing configurations to the NFS volume
- Test the search heads
- Enable the load balancer
The official documentation is available at:
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.0.2/DistSearch/Configuresearchheadpooling