Splunk Core Certified User Interview Questions
Preparing for an interview is as important as preparing for an exam. Therefore, preparing for an interview takes a lot more practice, time, effort and confidence to ace any exam. First Impression is the last impression so you have to give your best. Therefore, to help our candidates to prepare well for the Splunk Core Certified User interview, we have tried our best to present you with the best and expert-revised interview questions. Moreover, we have covered all Splunk Core Certified User interview questions from basic to intermediate and to advance level. Therefore, we highly recommend the aspirants prepare with the best and achieve the best.
Given Below are some top Splunk Core Certified User Interview Questions. This would help the candidates get an idea about what types and patterns they should expect.
1. What are Splunk indexers?
Splunk indexers provide data processing and storage for local and remote data and host the primary Splunk data store.
2. Define Search Head.
A search head is a Splunk Enterprise instance that distributes searches to indexers. Search heads can be either dedicated or not, depending on whether they also perform indexing. Dedicated search heads don’t have any indexes of their own, other than the usual internal indexes. Instead, they consolidate and display results that originate from remote search peers.
3. Name the Splunk instance that forwards data to remote indexers.
Forwarders are Splunk instances that forward data to remote indexers for data processing and storage. In most cases, they do not index data themselves.
4. What are Index Clusters?
An indexer cluster is a group of indexers configured to replicate each others’ data, so that the system keeps multiple copies of all data. This process is known as index replication. By maintaining multiple, identical copies of data, indexer clusters prevent data loss while promoting data availability for searching.
5. What are the key benefits of index Replication?
The key benefits of index replication are:
- Data availability: An indexer is always available to handle incoming data, and the indexed data is available for searching.
- Data fidelity: You never lose any data. You have the assurance that the data sent to the cluster is exactly the same data that gets stored in the cluster and that a search can later access.
- Data recovery: Your system can tolerate downed indexers without losing data or losing access to data.
- Disaster recovery: With multisite clustering, your system can tolerate the failure of an entire data center.
- Search affinity: With multisite clustering, search heads can access the entire set of data through their local sites, greatly reducing long-distance network traffic.
6. What are the three types of nodes in every cluster?
Each cluster has three types of nodes:
- A single master node to manage the cluster.
- Several to many peer nodes to index and maintain multiple copies of the data and to search the data.
- One or more search heads to coordinate searches across the set of peer nodes.
7. Define Pivot in Splunk.
Pivot refers to the table, chart, or data visualization you create using the Pivot Editor. The Pivot Editor lets users map attributes defined by data model objects to a table, chart, or data visualization without having to write the searches in the Search Processing Language (SPL) to generate them. Pivots can be saved as reports and added to dashboards.
8. Explain data models.
Data models encode specialized domain knowledge about one or more sets of indexed data. They enable Pivot Editor users to create reports and dashboards without designing the searches that generate them.
9. What configurations can be included in an Add-on?
An add-on provide specific capabilities to assist in gathering, normalizing, and enriching data sources.
An add-on might include any or all of the following configurations:
- Data source input configurations.
- Data parsing and transformation configurations to structure the data for Splunk Enterprise.
- Lookup files for data enrichment.
- Supporting knowledge objects.
10. What are the benefits of search engine in Splunk enterprise?
Search is the primary way users navigate their data in Splunk Enterprise. You can save a search as a report and use it to power dashboard panels. Searches provide insight from your data, such as:
- Retrieving events from an index
- Calculating metrics
- Searching for specific conditions within a rolling time window
- Identifying patterns in your data
- Predicting future trends
11. What do mean by Timeline of Events?
The Timeline of events is a visual representation of the number of events that occur at each point in time. As the timeline updates with your search results, there are clusters or patterns of bars. The height of each bar indicates the count of events. Peaks or valleys in the timeline can indicate spikes in activity or server downtime. The timeline highlights patterns of events, or peaks and lows in event activity.
12. Define Event.
An Event is a single piece of data in Splunk software, similar to a record in a log file or other data input. When data is indexed, it is divided into individual events. Each event is given a timestamp, host, source, and source type. Often, a single event corresponds to a single line in your inputs, but some inputs have multiline events, and some inputs have multiple events on a single line. When you run a successful search, you get back events.
13. Can you save a search as a Dashboard Panel?
Yes, You can also save a search as a dashboard panel. Dashboards can have one or more panels which can show search results in tables or in graphical visualizations.
14. Explain Event types.
Event types are a categorization system to help you make sense of your data. Event types let you sift through huge amounts of data, find similar patterns, and create alerts and reports. Every event that can be returned by that search gets an association with that event type.
15. How can you search fields in your data?
The Data Summary dialog box shows three tabs: Hosts, Sources, Sourcetypes. These tabs represent searchable fields in your data.
16. Define Host in an event.
The host of an event is the hostname, IP address, or fully qualified domain name of the network machine from which the event originated. In a distributed environment, you can use the host field to search data from specific machines.
17. What are the four Types of Datasets?
There are four dataset types:
- Event datasets represent a set of events. Root event datasets are defined by constraints (see below).
- Transaction datasets represent transactions–groups of events that are related in some way, such as events related to a firewall intrusion incident, or the online reservation of a hotel room by a single customer.
- Search datasets represent the results of an arbitrary search. Search datasets are typically defined by searches that use transforming or streaming commands to return results in a table format, and they contain the results of those searches.
- Child datasets can be added to any dataset. They represent a subset of the dataset encompassed by their parent dataset. You may want to base a pivot on a child dataset because it represents a specific chunk of data–exactly the chunk you need to work with for a particular report.
18. What is Report Cloning?
Report cloning is a way to quickly create a report that is based on an existing report. You can then give the clone a unique name and edit it so it returns different results.
19. What precautions should you keep in mind while cloning a report?
You should not give your cloned report the same name and search string as the original report. If you do this, you create a situation where the original report and the cloned report are linked together. This means that the original report must exist in order for its clone to exist. If you delete the original report, the linked clone report disappears with it.
20. How can you Disable a Report?
To Disable a Report:
- Navigate to Settings > Searches, Reports, and Alerts.
- Locate the search you want to disable and click its Disable link.
21. Explain Top and Rare Commands.
The top command returns the most frequent values of a specified field in your returned events. The rare command, returns the least common value of a specified field in your returned events. Both commands share the same syntax. If you don’t specify a limit, the default number of values displayed in a top or rare is ten.
22. What are Constraints?
Constraints are simple searches that define the dataset that a dataset represents. They are used by root event datasets and all child datasets to define the dataset that they represent. All child datasets inherit constraints from their parent datasets, and have a new constraint of their own. This additional constraint ensures that they each inherit a subset of their parent dataset’s dataset.
23. Explain Lookup field.
Lookup is a knowledge object that provides data enrichment by mapping a select value in an event to a field in another data source, and appending the matched results to the original event. For example, you can use a lookup to match an HTTP status code and return a new field containing a detailed description of the status. Lookups are incorporated into dashboards and forms to provide content in a human readable format, allowing users to interact with event data without knowing obscure or cryptic event fields.
24. What are Data Model datasets?
They are the building block of a data model. Each data model is composed of one or more data model datasets. Each dataset within a data model defines a subset of the dataset represented by the data model as a whole. Data model datasets have a hierarchical relationship with each other, meaning they have parent-child relationships. Data models can contain multiple dataset hierarchies. There are three types of dataset hierarchies: event, search, and transaction.
25. Define Datasets.
A dataset is a collection of data that you define and maintain for a specific business purpose. It is represented as a table, with fields for columns and field values for cells.
26. What are Schedule Reports?
A scheduled report is a report that runs on a scheduled interval, and which can trigger an action each time it runs.
27. What actions can you define for schedule reports?
You can define up to four actions for a scheduled report:
- Send a report summary by email
- Write the report results to a CSV lookup file
- Set up a webhook that sends a message to an external web resource, such as a chatroom
- Log and index searchable events
28. In how many ways can you open the Edit Schedule dialog?
There are three ways to open the Edit Schedule dialog:
- After saving a search as a report
- When you extend a dataset as a scheduled report
- When you manage an existing report
29. How can you Instantly Schedule a report?
To schedule a report right after you create it:
- Create a search and run it.
- Save the search as a report.
Do not enable a time range picker. Scheduled reports cannot include time range pickers, because they always run on a set schedule. - Click Schedule.
30. What are the two ways of field Extraction?
There are two methods of field extraction: regular expressions and delimiter-based field extraction. The regular expression method is useful for extracting fields from unstructured event data, where events may follow a variety of different event patterns. It is also helpful if you are unfamiliar with regular expression syntax and usage, because it generates regular expressions and lets you validate them.
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