title: host=$decideOnStartup not working in splunk configuration on Windows EC2
body: <p>As <a href="https://community.splunk.com/t5/Getting-Data-In/Inputs-conf-decideonstartup/m-p/103954" rel="nofollow noreferrer">someone mentioned in the Splunk forum</a>:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>$decideonstartup just would not work for me.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>The <a href="https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/SplunkCloud/latest/Data/SetadefaulthostforaSplunkserver" rel="nofollow noreferrer">splunk daemon is <em>supposed</em></a> to set the value automatically:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>Note: By default, the host attribute is set to the variable $decideOnStartup, which means that it's set to the hostname of the machine splunkd is running on. The splunk daemon re-interprets the value each time it starts up.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>But it just stayed as <code>host=$decideonstartup</code> for me.</p>
  <p>What's the best way to set this value when configuring Splunk via an AWS SSM Document?</p>