What is a risk of using the Auto Deployment feature of Distributed Configuration Management to distribute indexes.conf?

Using the Auto Deployment feature of Distributed Configuration Management to distribute indexes.conf can pose the risk of indexes having different settings across various instances. This happens because the Auto Deployment feature applies configurations to all targeted peers based on the contents of the deployment apps and the configurations may not be uniform or harmonized across all systems.

When indexes.conf, which defines settings such as the retention policy, data indexing volume, and indexing behavior, is not consistently configured, discrepancies can arise. For instance, different retention policies can lead to some indexed data being deleted sooner than expected on some indexers, while others retain it longer. This inconsistency can complicate data management, retrieval, and compliance adherence.

It's important to ensure that all indexers maintain uniform index settings to guarantee consistent behavior across the environment, and any divergence could lead to operational issues, data loss, or unexpected performance characteristics.

The other choices may touch on various issues related to configuration management but fail to center on the primary risk of differing index settings across deployments.