SPLK-1003 Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin Questions and Answers

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.1/DistSearch/Forwardsearchheaddata

Per the provided Splunk reference URL by @hwangho, scroll to section Forward search head data, subsection titled, 2. Configure the search head as a forwarder. "Create an outputs.conf file on the search head that configures the search head for load-balanced forwarding across the set of search peers (indexers)."

Hot/warm/cold/thawed bucket types are searchable. Frozen isn't searchable because its either deleted at that state or archived.

REGEX =

* Enter a regular expression to operate on your data.

FORMAT =

* NOTE: This option is valid for both index-time and search-time field extraction. Index-time field extraction configuration require the FORMAT settings. The FORMAT settings is optional for search-time field extraction configurations.

* This setting specifies the format of the event, including any field names or values you want to add.

DEST_KEY =

* NOTE: This setting is only valid for index-time field extractions.

* Specifies where SPLUNK software stores the expanded FORMAT results in accordance with the REGEX match.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.5/Admin/Inputsconf

[tcp://:]

*Configures the input to listen on a specific TCP network port.

*If a makes a connection to this instance, the input uses this stanza to configure itself.

*If you do not specify , this stanza matches all connections on the specified port.

*Generates events with source set to "tcp:", for example: tcp:514

*If you do not specify a sourcetype, generates events with sourcetype set to "tcp-raw"

The correct methods to connect a deployment client to a deployment server are A and C. You can either run the command splunk set deploy-poll : from the command line of the deployment client1 or create and edit a deploymentclient.conf file in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local on the deployment client2. Both methods require you to specify the IP address, hostname, and management port of the deployment server that you want the client to connect to.

 Indexers, search head, deployment server, license master, universal forwarder. This is the combination of Splunk component instances that are needed to handle the volume of data from collecting log files from 50 Linux servers and 200 Windows servers, following the best practices. The roles and functions of these components are:

Indexers: These are the Splunk instances that index the data and make it searchable. They also perform some data processing, such as timestamp extraction, line breaking, and field extraction. Multiple indexers can be clustered together to provide high availability, data replication, and load balancing.

Search head: This is the Splunk instance that coordinates the search across the indexers and merges the results from them. It also provides the user interface for searching, reporting, and dashboarding. A search head can also be clustered with other search heads to provide high availability, scalability, and load balancing.

Deployment server: This is the Splunk instance that manages the configuration and app deployment for the universal forwarders. It allows the administrator to centrally control the inputs.conf, outputs.conf, and other configuration files for the forwarders, as well as distribute apps and updates to them.

License master: This is the Splunk instance that manages the licensing for the entire Splunk deployment. It tracks the license usage of all the Splunk instances and enforces the license limits and violations. It also allows the administrator to add, remove, or change licenses.

Universal forwarder: These are the lightweight Splunk instances that collect data from various sources and forward it to the indexers or other forwarders. They do not index or parse the data, but only perform minimal processing, such as compression and encryption. They are installed on the Linux and Windows servers that generate the log files.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.1/Troubleshooting/Usebtooltotroubleshootconfigurations

"The btool command simulates the merging process using the on-disk conf files and creates a report showing the merged settings."

"The report does not necessarily represent what's loaded in memory. If a conf file change is made that requires a service restart, the btool report shows the change even though that change isn't active."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.3/Security/ConfigureLDAPwithSplunkWeb

"You can map either users or groups, but not both. If you are using groups, all users must be members of an appropriate group. Groups inherit capabilities form the highest level role they're a member of." "If your LDAP environment does not have group entries, you can treat each user as its own group."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.5/Indexer/Howindexingworks

--reset Reset the fishbucket for the given key or file in the btree. Resetting the checkpoint for an active monitor input reindexes data, resulting in increased license use.https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.1/Troubleshooting/CommandlinetoolsforusewithSupport

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.5/Data/Usingforwardingagents

Scroll down to the section Titled, How to configure forwarder inputs, and subsection Here are the main ways that you can configure data inputs on a forwarder Install the app or add-on that contains the inputs you wants

Referencehttps://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.3/Admin/Configurationparametersandthedatapipeline

 The parsing phase is the process of extracting fields and values from raw data. The parsing phase respects LINE_BREAKER, SHOULD_LINEMERGE, BREAK_ONLY_BEFORE_DATE, and all other line merging settings in props.conf. These settings determine how Splunk breaks the data into events based on certain criteria, such as timestamps or regular expressions. The event boundaries are defined by the props.conf file, which can be modified by the administrator. Therefore, the parsing phase is the last opportunity for defining event boundaries.

According to the Splunk system admin course PDF, When adding native users, Username and Password ARE REQUIRED

https://docs.splunk.com/Splexicon:Serverclass

"When ingesting event data, the measured data volume is based on the new raw data that is placed into the indexing pipeline. Because the data is measured at the indexing pipeline, data that is filetered and dropped prior to indexing does not count against the license volume qota."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.6/Admin/HowSplunklicensingworks

https://docs.splunk.com/Splexicon:Searchpeer

"A Splunk platform instance that responses to search requests from a search head. The term "Search peer" is usually synonymous with the indexer role in a distributed search topology..."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.2/Admin/Aboutlicenseviolations

"An Enterprise license stack with a license volume of 100 GB of data per day or more does not currently violate."

The Splunk indexing process consists of three main phases: Input, Parsing, and Indexing. Understanding these phases is crucial for configuring data inputs and managing data flow within Splunk.

Input Phase: Splunk receives data from various sources, such as files, network ports, or scripted inputs.

Parsing Phase: Splunk breaks the data into individual events, applies transformations, and extracts timestamps.

Indexing Phase: Splunk writes the parsed events to disk and creates indexes for efficient searching.

From the official Splunk documentation:

"The data pipeline consists of three main phases: input, parsing, and indexing."

— How the Splunk platform indexes data - Splunk Documentation

Therefore, the correct order of the indexing process is: Input phase → Parsing phase → Indexing phase.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Forwarding/Protectagainstlossofin-flightdata#:~:text=The%20default%20for%20the%20maxQueueSize,wait%20queue%20size%20is%2021MB.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Forwarding/Protectagainstlossofin-flightdata

When a user is assignedmultiple rolesin Splunk and each has a defined srchFilter, Splunk combines these filters using alogical ANDoperation. This ensures that the user can only search within the intersection of constraints imposed by each role.

From Splunk Docs:

"If a user has multiple roles assigned and multiple roles specify srchFilter, Splunk softwareANDs the filters together."

— Source: Splunk Documentation – authorize.conf

Let’s break it down:

role_A specifies: sourcetype!=json AND index=main

role_B specifies: sourcetype=csv

To evaluate the effective search filter for the user, Splunk willANDthe two conditions:

(sourcetype=csv) AND (sourcetype!=json AND index=main)

This means the user's search is limited to events where:

sourcetype=csv (from role_B)

sourcetype!=json AND index=main (from role_A)

Combining them together logically:

srchFilter = ((sourcetype=csv) AND (sourcetype!=json AND index=main))

This is exactly what is shown inOption A.

Using the Splunk reference URLhttps://docs.splunk.com/Splexicon:Searchpeer

"search peer is a splunk platform instance that responds to search requests from a search head. The term "search peer" is usally synonymous with the indexer role in a distributed search topology. However, other instance types also have access to indexed data, particularly internal diagnostic data, and thus function as search peers when they respond to search requests for that data."

According to the Splunk documentation1, event processing occurs at the parsing phase of the data pipeline. The parsing phase is where Splunk software processes incoming data into individual events, extracts timestamp information, assigns source types, and performs other tasks to make the data searchable1. The parsing phase can also apply field extractions, event type matching, and other transformations to the events2.

The possible causes of the load balancing issue on the Universal Forwarder are A and C. The receiving port and the DNS record are both factors that affect the ability of the Universal Forwarder to distribute data across multiple receivers. If the receiving port is not properly set up to listen on the right port, or if the DNS record used is not set up with a valid list of IP addresses, the Universal Forwarder might fail to connect to some or all of the receivers, resulting in poor load balancing.

In Splunk Enterprise, license warnings occur when the daily indexing volume exceeds the licensed quota. These warnings are tracked from midnight to midnight based on the system clock of the license manager. If the number of warnings surpasses the allowed threshold within a specified period, a license violation ensues, potentially restricting search capabilities.

To prevent a license warning from escalating to a violation, administrators have until midnight to address the issue. The recommended action is toadd a new licenseto the license manager before midnight. This increases the daily indexing volume quota, ensuring that the current day's data ingestion falls within the permissible limits.

It's important to note that deleting data from indexers or the license manager does not retroactively reduce the recorded license usage for the day. Once data is indexed, it contributes to the day's license volume, and its removal does not negate that contribution.

"The search head replicates the knowledge bundle periodically in the background or when initiating a search. " "As part of the distributed search process, the search head replicates and distributes its knowledge objects to its search peers, or indexers. Knowledge objects include saved searches, event types, and other entities used in searching accorss indexes. The search head needs to distribute this material to its search peers so that they can properly execute queries on its behalf."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.2/Updating/Aboutdeploymentserver

"The deployment server is the tool for distributing configurations, apps, and content updates to groups of Splunk Enterprise instances."

When there are conflicting settings within two or more configuration files, the setting with the highest precedence is used. The precedence of configuration files is determined by a combination of the file type, the directory location, and the alphabetical order of the file names.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.2/Data/AboutHECIDXAck

- Section: About channels and sending data

Sending events to HEC with indexer acknowledgment active is similar to sending them with the setting off. There is one crucial difference: when you have indexer acknowledgment turned on, you must specify a channel when you send events. The concept of a channel was introduced in HEC primarily to prevent a fast client from impeding the performance of a slow client. When you assign one channel per client, because channels are treated equally on Splunk Enterprise, one client can't affect another. You must include a matching channel identifier both when sending data to HEC in an HTTP request and when requesting acknowledgment that events contained in the request have been indexed. If you don't, you will receive the error message, "Data channel is missing." Each request that includes a token for which indexer acknowledgment has been enabled must include a channel identifier, as shown in the following example cURL statement, where represents the event data portion of the request

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Forwarder/8.2.1/Forwarder/HowtoforwarddatatoSplunkEnterprise

"You can collect data on the universal forwarder using several methods. Define inputs on the universal forwarder with the CLI. You can use the CLI to define inputs on the universal forwarder. After you define the inputs, the universal forwarder collects data based on those definitions as long as it has access to the data that you want to monitor. Define inputs on the universal forwarder with configuration files. If the input you want to configure does not have a CLI argument for it, you can configure inputs with configuration files. Create an inputs.conf file in the directory, $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local

According to the Splunk documentation1, a heavy forwarder is a Splunk Enterprise instance that can parse and filter data before forwarding it to an indexer. A heavy forwarder can perform line breaking,which is the process of splitting incoming data into individual events based on a set of rules2. A heavy forwarder can also apply other transformations to the data, such as field extractions, event type matching, or masking sensitive data3.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.0/Admin/Wheretofindtheconfigurationfiles

"To determine the order of directories for evaluating configuration file precendence, Splunk software considers each file's context. Configuration files operate in either a global context or in the context of the current app and user"

Splunk REST API is a valid method to create a Splunk user. The Splunk REST API allows administrators to create, edit, and delete users programmatically using HTTP requests. The other options are not valid methods to create a Splunk user. Creating a support ticket does not create a user, but requests assistance from Splunk support. Creating a user on the host operating system does not create a Splunk user, but a system user. Adding the username to users.conf does not create a user, but modifies the configuration file that stores user information. References = Configure users with the CLI, Configure users and roles

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.1/Indexer/HowSplunkstoresindexes

Once further conditions are met (for example, the index reaches some maximum number of warm buckets), the indexer begins to roll the warm buckets to cold, based on their age. It always selects the oldest warm bucket to roll to cold. Buckets continue to roll to cold as they age in this manner. Cold buckets reside in a different location from hot and warm buckets. You can configure the location so that cold buckets reside on cheaper storage.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.1/Knowledge/Configureadvancedextractionswithfieldtransforms

use transformations with props.conf and transforms.conf to:

– Mask or delete raw data as it is being indexed

–Override sourcetype or host based upon event values

– Route events to specific indexes based on event content

– Prevent unwanted events from being indexed

URLhttps://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.2/DistSearch/Configuredistributedsearch

"To activate distributed search, you add search peers, or indexers, to a Splunk Enterprise instance that you desingate as a search head. You do this by specifying each search peer manually."

The correct answer is C and D. A heavy forwarder and an indexer are the Splunk components that can break a stream of syslog inputs into individual events.

A universal forwarder is a lightweight agent that can forward data to a Splunk deployment, but it does not perform any parsing or indexing on the data. A search head is a Splunk component that handles search requests and distributes them to indexers, but it does not process incoming data.

A heavy forwarder is a Splunk component that can perform parsing, filtering, routing, and aggregation on the data before forwarding it to indexers or other destinations. A heavy forwarder can break a stream of syslog inputs into individual events based on the line breaker and should linemerge settings in the inputs.conf file1.

An indexer is a Splunk component that stores and indexes data, making it searchable. An indexer can also break a stream of syslog inputs into individual events based on the props.conf file settings, such as TIME_FORMAT, MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD, and line_breaker2.

A Splunk component is a software process that performs a specific function in a Splunk deployment, such as data collection, data processing, data storage, data search, or data visualization.

Syslog is a standard protocol for logging messages from network devices, such as routers, switches, firewalls, or servers. Syslog messages are typically sent over UDP or TCP to a central syslog server or a Splunk instance.

Breaking a stream of syslog inputs into individual events means separating the data into discrete records that can be indexed and searched by Splunk. Each event should have a timestamp, a host, a source, and a sourcetype, which are the default fields that Splunk assigns to the data.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.1/Forwarding/Aboutforwardingandreceivingdata

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Forwarder/8.1.1/Forwarder/Configureforwardingwithoutputs.conf#:~:text=compressed%3Dtrue%20This%20tells%20the,the%20forwarder%20sends%20raw%20data.

homePath = $SPLUNK_DB/hatchdb/db

coldPath = $SPLUNK_DB/hatchdb/colddb

thawedPath = $SPLUNK_DB/hatchdb/thaweddb

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Admin/Indexesconf

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.1/Admin/Indexesconf#PER_INDEX_OPTIONS

Per the provided reference URLhttps://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.1/Admin/User-seedconf

"To set the default username and password, place user-seed.conf in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local. You must restart Splunk to enable configurations. If the $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/passwd file is present, the settings in this file (user-seed.conf) are not used."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Security/Aboutusersandroles#Role_inheritance

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.1/Security/Aboutusersandroles#How_users_inherit_capabilities

- etc/system/local/ has better precedence at index time - for identical settings in the same file, the last one overwrite others, see :https://community.splunk.com/t5/Getting-Data-In/What-is-the-precedence-for-identical-stanzas-within-a-single/m-p/283566

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.0/Data/Specifyinputpathswithwildcards

The ellipsis wildcard searches recursively through directories and any number of levels of subdirectories to find matches.

If you specify a folder separator (for example, //var/log/.../file), it does not match the first folder level, only subfolders.

* The asterisk wildcard matches anything in that specific folder path segment.

Unlike ..., * does not recurse through subfolders.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.3/Admin/Distdeploylicenses#Clustered_deployments_and_licensing_issues

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.3/Data/Monitornetworkports

The Data Preview feature should be used when validating the parsing of data. The Data Preview feature allows you to preview how Splunk software will index your data before you commit the data to an index. You can use the Data Preview feature to check the following aspects of data parsing1:

Timestamp recognition: You can verify that Splunk software correctly identifies the timestamps of your events and assigns them to the _time field.

Event breaking: You can verify that Splunk software correctly breaks your data stream into individual events based on the line breaker and should linemerge settings.

Source type assignment: You can verify that Splunk software correctly assigns a source type to your data based on the props.conf file settings. You can also manually override the source type if needed.

Field extraction: You can verify that Splunk software correctly extracts fields from your events based on the transforms.conf file settings. You can also use the Interactive Field Extractor (IFX) to create custom field extractions.

The Data Preview feature is available in Splunk Web under Settings > Data inputs > Data preview. You can access the Data Preview feature when you add a new input or edit an existing input1.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. When extracting fields for ingested data. The Data Preview feature can be used to verify the field extraction for data that has not been ingested yet, but not for data that has already been indexed. To extract fields from ingested data, you can use the IFX or the rex command in the Search app2.

B. When previewing the data before searching. The Data Preview feature does not allow you to search the data, but only to view how it will be indexed. To preview the data before searching, you can use the Search app and specify a time range or a sample ratio.

C. When reviewing data on the source host. The Data Preview feature does not access the data on the source host, but only the data that has been uploaded or monitored by Splunk software. To review data on the source host, you can use the Splunk Universal Forwarder or the Splunk Add-on for Unix and Linux.