Splunk Enterprise Architect Interview Questions

Preparing for an interview is a critical step in achieving your goals. When it comes to the Splunk Enterprise Architect interview, it’s critical to recognize the importance of both theoretical and practical expertise. Enterprise architecture is about your conceptual understanding and capacity to apply that understanding intelligently. Preparing for an interview for the role of Splunk Enterprise Architect can be a daunting task, but with the right strategy, you can increase your chances of success. Here are some steps you can take to prepare for the interview:

1. Review the job description: Make sure you understand the responsibilities, skills, and qualifications required for the position. This will help you tailor your responses and highlight relevant experience during the interview.
2. Research the company: Learn about the company’s culture, values, and Splunk implementation. This will help you understand the organization and how you can contribute as an Enterprise Architect.
3. Brush up on Splunk knowledge: Review Splunk documentation and practice using the platform to improve your knowledge and proficiency.
4. Review your technical skills: Be prepared to discuss your experience with Splunk and other related technologies, such as AWS, Linux, and SQL. Be ready to explain how you have used these technologies in previous projects.
5. Practice problem-solving: Be ready to solve real-world problems related to Splunk’s implementation and use cases. Practice explaining your thought process and how you arrived at your solution.
6. Highlight your soft skills: Enterprise Architects need strong communication, leadership, and collaboration skills. Be prepared to discuss how you have used these skills in previous projects and how you plan to use them in this role.
7. Prepare examples of past projects: Be ready to discuss previous projects you have worked on and how you have contributed to the project’s success. Highlight specific challenges and how you overcame them.
8. Practice interviewing: Practice answering common interview questions and practice explaining complex technical concepts in simple terms. Record yourself to review your responses and body language.
9. Dress appropriately: Dress professionally for the interview to make a good first impression.
10. Show enthusiasm and interest: Show your passion for Splunk and the role by asking thoughtful questions and engaging with the interviewer.

Remember to be confident, honest, and personable during the interview. By following these tips, you can demonstrate your technical expertise and soft skills, as well as your enthusiasm for the Splunk Enterprise Architect role. We’ve compiled a list of the finest Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect interview questions to give you a good idea of the types of questions you’ll be asked during the interview.

Remember that having the right knowledge combined with a respectable amount of confidence can help you ace the interview. So, go through the following questions carefully and make sure that on the day of the interview, you offer your responses succinctly and assertively. Now, let’s look at the top Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect Interview Questions.

Advanced Interview Questions

Q1. A client wants to set up a highly available Splunk environment. What are the steps you would take to achieve this?

Answer: To set up a highly available Splunk environment, I would take the following steps:

• Configure a distributed search head cluster to handle search requests and distribute the workload.
• Set up indexers in a cluster to ensure data is replicated across multiple nodes and prevent data loss.
• Implement a load balancer to distribute traffic to the search head cluster and indexers.
• Configure site-to-site replication to ensure that data is available even if one site fails.
• Use monitoring tools to ensure the environment is working as expected and proactively identify any issues.

Q2. A client’s Splunk environment is running slowly. What steps would you take to troubleshoot the issue?

Answer: To troubleshoot a slow Splunk environment, I would take the following steps:

• Review the search performance dashboard to identify any bottlenecks.
• Check the CPU and memory usage of the search head and indexers to ensure they are not overloaded.
• Check the network latency between the search head and indexers to ensure there are no network issues.
• Review the search queries to identify any inefficient queries or errors.
• Review the configuration files to ensure they are optimized for performance.
• Use Splunk’s built-in performance monitoring tools to identify any issues and adjust the environment accordingly.

Q3. A client needs to ingest data from a custom data source. How would you set up the Splunk environment to accommodate this data source?

Answer: To ingest data from a custom data source, I would take the following steps:

• Create a data input in Splunk to receive the data.
• Define the data source format in Splunk, including the field extractions, event types, and tags.
• Create a parsing pipeline to transform the data into a Splunk-friendly format, if necessary.
• Configure the indexers to store the data and ensure the data is replicated across multiple nodes.
• Implement a search head cluster to handle search requests.
• Use monitoring tools to ensure the data is being ingested and indexed correctly.

Q4. A client wants to implement data retention policies. How would you set up Splunk to accommodate these policies?

Answer: To implement data retention policies, I would take the following steps:

• Configure retention policies for the data in Splunk.
• Implement an automated archiving process to move data to less expensive storage as it ages.
• Configure the retention policies to ensure that data is deleted once it is no longer needed.
• Set up an audit log to track the retention and deletion of data.
• Use monitoring tools to ensure the policies are being followed and data is being archived and deleted as expected.

Q5. A client needs to implement Splunk in a hybrid cloud environment. What steps would you take to set up the Splunk environment?

Answer: To set up Splunk in a hybrid cloud environment, I would take the following steps:

• Configure the Splunk environment in a cloud-based infrastructure, such as AWS or Azure.
• Set up a secure VPN connection between the cloud-based Splunk environment and the on-premises infrastructure.
• Configure the Splunk environment to ingest data from both the on-premises infrastructure and the cloud-based infrastructure.
• Set up appropriate access controls to ensure that data is only accessible to authorized users.
• Use monitoring tools to ensure the environment is working as expected and proactively identify any issues.

Q6. Can you explain the difference between a Splunk indexer and a search head?

Feature	Splunk Indexer	Splunk Search Head
Functionality	Stores and indexes data	Searches and analyzes indexed data
Data Input	Receives data from forwarders	Does not receive data directly
Search	Capable of executing search queries	Executes search queries
Data Retention	Stores indexed data for a specified time	Does not store indexed data
Scaling	Can be scaled horizontally	Can be scaled horizontally
Hardware	Optimized for storage	Optimized for processing and analysis
User Interface	Limited UI for administrative tasks	Full-featured UI for search and analysis
Licensing	Requires a license	Requires a license

In summary, Splunk Indexers are responsible for receiving, indexing, and storing data, while Splunk Search Heads are responsible for searching and analyzing the indexed data. Both can be scaled horizontally to handle larger volumes of data and are optimized for different hardware requirements. Splunk Indexers require a license, while Splunk Search Heads do not, but a license is still required to use the overall Splunk software.

Q7. How do you troubleshoot a Splunk indexing issue?

Answer: To troubleshoot a Splunk indexing issue, you can follow these steps:

1. Verify that data is reaching the indexer: Check the input status in the Splunk Web UI or use the inputs.conf file to ensure that data is being received by the indexer.
2. Check the indexing pipeline: Use the index=_internal search to check the indexing pipeline and identify any errors or issues.
3. Check for data duplication: Use the dedup command to check for duplicate events in the index.
4. Monitor disk space: Check the disk space on the indexer to ensure that there is enough space for the index.
5. Check the indexing performance: Use the index=_internal search to check the indexing performance and identify any bottlenecks.
6. Check for index corruption: Use the fsck command to check for index corruption and repair any issues.
7. Check for memory issues: Check the memory usage on the indexer and ensure that there is enough memory for indexing.
8. Check for CPU issues: Check the CPU usage on the indexer and ensure that it’s not overworked and causing indexing delays.
9. Check for network issues: Check for network connectivity issues between the data source and the indexer that may be causing delays or data loss.
10. check for any relevant splunkd.log or Splunk-indexer.log for more details.

Additionally, you can also contact Splunk support or consult their documentation for further troubleshooting guidance.

Q7. How do you optimize Splunk’s performance?

Answer: There are several ways to optimize the performance of a Splunk deployment. Some of the most used ways include:

1. Optimize indexing: Tune indexing performance by adjusting settings such as the number of indexing threads, the size of the indexing queue, and the maximum number of events per second.
2. Optimize searching: Tune searching performance by adjusting settings such as the number of search threads, the size of the search queue, and the maximum number of concurrent searches.
3. Optimize disk usage: Splunk performance can be affected by disk usage, so it’s important to keep an eye on disk usage and free up disk space when necessary. This can be done by reducing the retention period of data, compressing old data, or moving old data to a different disk or to external storage.
4. Optimize memory usage: Splunk performance can also be affected by memory usage, so it’s important to monitor memory usage and adjust settings such as the amount of memory allocated to Splunk, the number of concurrent searches, and the number of search threads.
5. Optimize network usage: Network latency can affect the performance of a Splunk deployment, especially in a distributed environment. It’s important to optimize network usage by reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent over the network and by reducing the number of network hops required to complete a search.
6. Use the appropriate hardware: Make sure that the hardware being used is appropriate for the size and complexity of the Splunk deployment. This includes having enough CPU and memory to handle the volume of data, and fast storage for indexing and searching.
7. Monitor and troubleshoot: Regularly monitor and troubleshoot the performance of the deployment, and address any issues that arise. Splunk provides some built-in tools for monitoring and troubleshooting such as a monitoring console, splunkd logs, etc.

Note that the above are just some general guidelines for optimizing Splunk performance, and the specific steps will depend on the specific deployment, use case, and data volume.

Q8. Can you explain how to set up a distributed Splunk environment?

Answer: Setting up a distributed Splunk environment involves several steps:

1. Plan your architecture: Determine the number and type of Splunk components (indexers, search heads, forwarders, etc.) you need and how they will be configured.
2. Install Splunk: Install the software on each machine that will be part of the distributed environment.
3. Configure indexers: Configure the indexers to handle data ingestion and indexing. This includes setting up index replication, search peers, and indexer clusters as needed.
4. Configure forwarders: Configure the forwarders to send data to the indexers. This includes setting up the inputs, outputs, and monitoring configurations.
5. Configure search heads: Configure the search heads to handle search and reporting. This includes setting up the search heads, replication, and search head clusters as needed.
6. Configure deployment server: Configure the deployment server to handle the distribution of configurations and apps to the indexers, forwarders, and search heads.
7. Configure monitoring: Configure monitoring and alerts to keep track of the health and performance of the distributed environment.
8. Test: Verify that data is being indexed and searchable, and that the different components are communicating and working properly.

It’s important to keep in mind that a distributed environment can be complex and may require a significant amount of planning and configuration. Splunk has a good documentation that can guide you through the setup process, it’s also recommended to check it before starting.

Q9. How do you handle data retention in a Splunk environment?

Answer: In a Splunk environment, data retention refers to the amount of time that data is kept before it is deleted or archived. Here are a few ways to handle data retention in a Splunk environment:

1. Retention policies: Splunk allows you to set retention policies for different types of data, such as raw data, indexed data, and summary data. You can specify how long data should be kept before it is deleted or archived.
2. Indexed data: Splunk indexes the data, it creates a bucket for each day, week, or month depending on the configuration. The retention policy can be set on these buckets, this way the data which is older than the specified retention period will be deleted automatically.
3. Archiving: Splunk also provides an option to archive the data instead of deleting it. This can be done by setting up an archiving process that moves data to external storage, such as a cloud storage service or a tape archive.
4. Data aging: Splunk provides a feature called “Data Aging” which is a process of moving data from hot, warm, and cold buckets. This can be used to move data from the hot bucket which is frequently searched to the cold bucket which is infrequently searched. This can save disk space and improve search performance.
5. Data Summary Management: Splunk also allows you to define Summary Indexing policies, which reduces the size of the indexed data and improves search performance. This can also be used to control data retention as well.
6. Data model acceleration: Data Model Acceleration is a feature that provides a summary of indexed data. The retention period for data model acceleration can be set separately.

It’s important to note that each organization’s data retention requirements will vary, so it’s important to determine the appropriate retention period for your organization’s data. Additionally, compliance regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA may also dictate data retention periods.

Q10. Can you explain how to set up and use the Splunk SDK?

Answer: Setting up and using the Splunk SDK involves several steps:

1. Install the SDK: Download and install the Splunk SDK for your programming language of choice (Python, Java, C#, etc.).
2. Configure the SDK: Configure the SDK with your Splunk instance’s hostname, port, and login credentials.
3. Import the SDK: Import the SDK into your project and start using the SDK’s functions to interact with Splunk.
4. Searching: Use the SDK to search your Splunk instance for data. This includes creating and executing search queries, managing search jobs, and retrieving search results.
5. Indexing: Use the SDK to index data into Splunk. This includes creating and updating indexing configurations and sending data to the indexer.
6. Managing: Use the SDK to manage your Splunk instance. This includes creating and modifying inputs, outputs, and configurations, as well as managing users and apps.
7. Monitoring: Use the SDK to monitor the health and performance of your Splunk instance. This includes retrieving system and indexing metrics and setting up alerts.
8. Create a script or application: Create a script or application that uses the SDK to interact with Splunk and automate certain tasks.
9. Test the script or application: Test the script or application to ensure that it is working correctly and that it can interact with Splunk as expected.

The SDK package that you need to install would depend on the programming language you’re using. Also, it’s important to note that the SDK requires that you have a good understanding of Splunk’s REST API and how it works, so familiarize yourself with the API first before using the SDK.

Q11. Can you explain how to set up and use the Splunk REST API?

Answer: The Splunk REST API allows you to interact with Splunk data and resources using standard HTTP methods. Here’s an overview of how to set up and use the Splunk REST API:

1. Enable the REST API: To use the Splunk REST API, you first need to enable it in the Splunk Web interface. Go to the “Settings” menu, then select “Server settings” and “REST API.” From there, you can enable the REST API and set the port on which it listens.
2. Authenticate: Once the REST API is enabled, you’ll need to authenticate in order to use it. The Splunk REST API supports several forms of authentication, including basic authentication and token-based authentication.
3. Make requests: Once authenticated, you can make requests to the REST API using standard HTTP methods such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. The Splunk REST API supports many different endpoints, which allow you to interact with different types of data and resources. For example, you can use the REST API to search for data, create saved searches, and manage users.
4. Use the SDK: Splunk also provides SDKs for several programming languages that make it easy to interact with the REST API. These SDKs provide a higher-level interface and abstract away some of the details of making requests to the REST API.
5. Utilize the documentation: Splunk’s documentation provides a lot of information about the different endpoints and options available in the REST API. This documentation can be accessed via the Splunk Web interface or through the developer portal.
6. Test your requests: Before using the REST API in a production environment, it is recommended to test the requests with test data. This will help to identify any issues and make sure that the requests are working as expected.

It’s important to note that The Splunk REST API is a powerful tool that allows you to automate many tasks and integrate Splunk with other systems. However, it’s important to be mindful of security and access controls when using the REST API and to follow best practices for securing RESTful web services.

Q12. How do you monitor and maintain a Splunk deployment?

Answer: Monitoring and maintaining a Splunk deployment involves several steps:

1. Monitor system health: Monitor the health and performance of your Splunk instance. This includes monitoring system metrics such as CPU, memory, and disk usage, as well as indexing metrics such as indexing rate and data volume.
2. Monitor indexing: Monitor the indexing process to ensure that data is being indexed correctly and in a timely manner.
3. Monitor search performance: Monitor the performance of search queries to ensure that they are returning results quickly and accurately.
4. Monitor forwarders: Monitor the forwarders to ensure that they are sending data to the indexers in a timely manner.
5. Monitor network: Monitor the network to ensure that there are no connectivity issues between the data sources and the indexers.
6. Monitor alerts: Monitor the alerts that you have set up to ensure that they are firing when they should and that the correct actions are being taken.
7. Monitor licensing: Monitor the licensing usage to ensure that you are in compliance with your Splunk license and that you have enough capacity to handle your data volume.
8. Perform regular maintenance: Perform regular maintenance tasks such as optimizing the index, running the fsck command to check for index corruption, and rotating the index.
9. Backup and restore: Regularly back up your data and configurations, and test your restore process to ensure that you can recover your data in case of an emergency.
10. Monitor the Splunkd.log and Splunk-indexer.log: Check these logs for any errors, warn and troubleshoot them as needed.

It’s important to keep in mind that monitoring and maintaining a Splunk deployment is an ongoing process that requires regular attention and monitoring. Splunk provides a set of monitoring consoles that can help you with this task, but it’s always good to have a monitoring plan in place.

Q13. Can you explain how to set up and use the Splunk App for Windows Infrastructure?

Answer: The Splunk App for Windows Infrastructure is a pre-built app that allows you to collect, monitor, and analyze data from Windows servers and clients. Here’s an overview of how to set up and use the Splunk App for Windows Infrastructure:

1. Install the app: The Splunk App for Windows Infrastructure can be installed through the Splunk Web interface by going to the “Apps” menu and selecting “Find more apps.” Search for “Windows Infrastructure” and install the app.
2. Configure data inputs: Once the app is installed, you’ll need to configure data inputs to collect data from your Windows servers and clients. This can be done by going to the “Data inputs” page in the app and selecting the appropriate input type (e.g., Windows Event Log, Performance counters, etc).
3. Configure data collection: Splunk App for Windows Infrastructure uses the Splunk Universal Forwarder to collect data. The forwarder needs to be installed on the Windows servers and clients that you want to collect data. You need to configure the forwarder with the appropriate inputs and output settings.
4. Create dashboards and alerts: The app provides a set of pre-built dashboards and alerts that allow you to monitor key metrics and events from your Windows infrastructure. These dashboards and alerts can be customized to suit your specific needs.
5. Monitor and troubleshoot: Once the data is collected, you can use the dashboards and alerts to monitor the performance of your Windows infrastructure, identify and troubleshoot issues, and create reports.
6. Additional Configuration: The app provides additional configurations such as configuring the data collection from the registry, SNMP, WMI, etc.

It’s important to note that the Splunk App for Windows Infrastructure is a powerful tool that allows you to gain insight into the performance and health of your Windows infrastructure. However, it’s important to be mindful of the data collection and storage to ensure compliance with regulatory standards.

Q14. How would you go about creating a custom Splunk app?

Answer: Creating a custom Splunk app involves several steps:

1. Plan the app: Determine the purpose and functionality of the app. This includes identifying the data sources, the types of searches and reports that will be included, and the user interface elements that will be needed.
2. Develop the app: Use the Splunk SDK for your programming language of choice, or use the Splunk Web Framework, to develop the app. This includes creating the inputs, outputs, configurations, and user interface elements.
3. Test the app: Test the app to ensure that it is working correctly and that it can interact with Splunk as expected.
4. Package the app: Use the Splunk App Builder or the command line tool to package the app for distribution.
5. Deploy the app: Deploy the app to your Splunk instance. This includes installing the app on the search heads, indexers, and forwarders as needed.
6. Test the app again: Test the app again to ensure that it is working correctly and that it is able to access the data and perform the searches and reports as expected.
7. Publish the app: Publish the app to the Splunkbase, if you want others to use it. This includes creating a Splunkbase account, submitting the app for review, and updating the app as needed.
8. Document the app: Create documentation for the app, including instructions on how to install and use the app, and a description of the app’s features and functionality.

It’s important to keep in mind that creating a custom app requires a good understanding of the Splunk platform, the SDK or the Splunk Web Framework, and the REST API. Splunk provides a developer guide that can help you with the process, it’s always good to check it before starting.

Basic Interview Questions

Q1. What is the role of Splunk IT Service Intelligence?

Answer: Splunk IT Service Intelligence is used for monitoring the health of IT services by making use of key performance indicators that are meant for tracking the level of severity of IT performance metrics. When KPI values meet threshold conditions, ITSI creates a notable event. Additionally, the app offers features for aggregating and analyzing notable events, and dashboards and visualizations that continuously allow monitoring of IT services and performing root cause investigations.

Q2. What is single host deployment?

Answer: A single server deployment consists of the splunkWeb and splunkd processes as well as the Splunk datastore on a single server machine. In this model, splunkd is capable of accessing, processing, indexing, and searching data on a single Splunk Server. For a different single server configuration, the Splunk datastore can also reside on a NAS, SAN, or any other host across the network.

Q3. What is the purpose of distributed data access?

Answer: Distributed data access gives the best control over data access for a huge infrastructure. We can install Splunk on any source host and then configure it so as to use any Splunk input module in order to access data from FIFO queues, files, and network ports on that host.

Q4. What do you mean by multiple datastore peering?

Answer: In large, multi-application, or multi-datacenter systems, multiple datastore peering enables data-level access controls. As a result, multiple datastore peering, like multiple datastore clustering, provides additional data indexing capability.

Q5. Describe Splunk Cloud.

Answer: While choosing Splunk Cloud, all the decisions of deployment regarding indexing and search topologies are already made. Moreover, the Splunk Cloud team builds and operates a single-tenant AWS environment in such a way that allows for meeting the compliance requirements of Splunk and service SLAs.

Q6. What do you know about SHC?

Answer: SHC stands for Search Head Clustering. This adds horizontal scalability and eliminates the single point of failure from the search tier. Besides, a minimum of three search heads is needed so as to implement an SHC. In order to manage the SHC configuration, an extra Splunk component known as the Search Head Cluster Deployer is needed for each SHC.

Q7. What are Splunk apps?

Answer: Splunk apps give the user interfaces that let us work with our data. These apps frequently use one or more add-ons so as to ingest various types of data.

Q8. Define SSL encryption.

Answer: SSL encryption is enabled out-of-the-box by using default certificates. If the SSL configuration on the deployment server is changed, the SSL configuration on the deployment clients must also be changed. The deployment server and its clients are required to agree on the SSL settings for their splunkd management ports. Thus, all of them must have SSL enabled or must have SSL disabled.

Q9. What are add-ons in Splunk enterprise?

Answer:  The Splunk add-ons enable Splunk Enterprise, or a Splunk app, to ingest or map a specific kind of data.

Q10. What does KPI do?

Answer: The term “Key Performance Indicator” refers to a tool that aids in finding the performance indicators that are used to assess the health of a service. The source search types, calculations, and severity-level thresholds that define the KPI health status are all part of the KPI search attributes.

Q11. Explain Splunk User Behavior Analytics.

Answer: Splunk User Behavior Analytics helps in finding the known, unknown, and hidden threats in our environment. We can use SplunkUser Behavior Analytics UBA to visualize and investigate internal and external anomalies and threats. Moreover, Splunk UBA combines with Splunk Enterprise Security to take benefit of Splunk events and to investigate UBA threats along with other notable events in the organization.

Q12. What are the key phases in deploying clusters?

Answer: The key steps in deploying clusters are as follows:

1.  Identifying the needs.
2.  Setting up the deployer.
3.  Installing the Splunk Enterprise instances.
4.  Initializing cluster members.
5.  Bringing up the cluster captain.
6.  Performing post-deployment setup.

Q13. What is SmartStore?

Answer: SmartStore is basically an indexer capability that gives a way to make use of remote object stores, like Amazon S3 to store indexed data. So, as a deployment’s data volume enhances, demand for storage outpaces the demand for computing resources. Moreover, SmartStore lets you manage indexer storage and compute resources in a cost-effective manner by separately scaling those resources.

Q14. Mention the benefits of SmartStore.

Answer: SmartStore has the following advantages:

• Bootstrapping capability.
• Reduced cost of storage.
• Access to high availability and data resiliency features.
• Simple and flexible configuration with per-index settings.
• The ability to scale compute and storage resources separately
• Ensuring efficient use of resources.

Q15. What is data consolidation?

Answer: Data consolidation, on the other hand, is a common architecture, with many forwarders sending data to a single Splunk instance. Universal forwarders provide unparsed data from workstations or production servers to a central Splunk Enterprise instance for consolidation and indexing, according to the scenario. Heavy forwarders, on the other hand, may route parsed data to a central Splunk indexer in other cases.

Q16. What do you mean by load balancing?

Answer: Load balancing eases the process of distributing data across different indexers so as to handle considerations like high data volume, fault tolerance, and horizontal scaling for enhanced search performance. Moreover, in load balancing, the forwarder routes data sequentially to different indexers at specified intervals.

Q17. Define a search head.

Answer: A search head is a Splunk Enterprise instance that distributes searches to indexers called “search peers”. The search heads can either be dedicated or not, depending on whether they perform the indexing also. Moreover, dedicated search heads don’t have any indexes of their own, other than the usual internal indexes. Instead, they consolidate and display results that are originated from remote search peers.

Q18. What is an indexer cluster?

Answer: An indexer cluster is a collection of indexers that have been set to replicate each other’s data so that the system has multiple copies of all data. Thus, this is known as the index replication process. Indexer clusters prevent data loss while promoting data availability for searching by maintaining multiple, identical copies of data

Q19. What is a diagnostic file?

Answer: A diag file gives a snapshot of the configurations and logs from the Splunk software and the select information about the platform instance. The diag collection process collects information including server specifications, file system information, operating system version, and the current network connections.

Q20. What does indexing refer to?

Answer: Indexing is a process of speeding up the search process by giving numeric addresses to the piece of data being searched. Furthermore, Splunk indexing is analogous to the concept of database indexing.

Q21. What are the types of indexing?

Answer: Types of indexing are:

• Main 
• Internal 
• Audit 

Q22. When does license warning occur?

Answer: License warnings occur when one exceeds the maximum daily indexing volume that is allowed for their license. If one has multiple license warnings and has exceeded the license warning limit for the license then that person will get a license violation.

Q23. What is a valid cluster?

Answer: A valid cluster consists of primary copies of all its buckets and hence is capable of handling search requests across the entire set of data. A valid cluster also has primary copies for every site with search affinity in the case of a multisite cluster.

Q24. What do you mean by the peer update process?

Answer: The peer update process makes sure that all peer nodes are sharing a common set of key configuration files. Additionally, one must manually invoke this process in order to distribute and update common files, apps, to the peer nodes. Moreover, the process runs automatically when a peer joins the cluster.

Q25. What is a deployer?

Answer: The deployer is a Splunk Enterprise instance that distributes apps and other configuration updates to other members of the search head cluster. The configuration bundle refers to the set of updates that the deployer publishes.

Q26. What does it mean by an out-of-sync member?

Answer: An out-of-sync member is a member that can’t sync its own set of replicated configurations with the common baseline set of replicated configurations that are maintained by the current captain. However, one does not want an out-of-sync member in order to become captain.

Q27. What are KV store collections?

Answer: The KV Store collections are containers of data similar to a database. They store data as key/value pairs. Thus, when we create a KV Store lookup, the collection needs to have two fields at least. Moreover, one of those fields must have a set of values matching with the values of a field in the event data for lookup matching to take place.

Q28. What does transforms. conf KV Store lookup do?

Answer: A transforms. conf KV Store lookup stanza gives the location of the KV Store collection that has to be used as a lookup table. Hence, it can optionally contain field matching rules and rules for time-bounded lookups.

Q29. What do you mean by horizontal scaling?

Answer: Well, with the increase in the number of users and the search load, one can add new search heads to the cluster. Thus, by combining a search head cluster along with a third-party load balancer placed between users and the cluster, the topology can be transparent to the users.

Q30. How can a user access a cluster?

Answer: The cluster can be accessed in the same way that any other search head can. They must direct their browser to any cluster member who is a search head. Furthermore, because cluster members share jobs, search artefacts, and configurations, it doesn’t matter which search head a user uses. The user has access to the same dashboards, searches, and other features.

Q31. What are pipelines and processors?

• Pipelines are single threads that are inside the splunkd process, configured with a single snippet of XML.
• Processors are individual, C, or C++ reusable functions acting on the stream of IT data that passes via pipeline. Pipelines can pass data to each other via queues.

Q32. When does the data integrity control feature do?

Answer: The Splunk Enterprise data integrity control feature helps in providing a way to verify the integrity of indexed data. When we allow data integrity control for an index, Splunk Enterprise computes hashes on every slice of data and then stores those hashes so that we can later go back and verify the integrity of data.

Q33. What is data routing?

Answer: A forwarder basically routes events to particular hosts on the basis of criteria like source, source type, or patterns in the events themselves in data routing. Moreover, routing requires a heavy forwarder at the event level.

Q34. What do you mean by intermediate forwarder?

Answer: In order to handle some complex use scenarios, an intermediate forwarder is utilised between a set of forwarders and the indexer. In this situation, the data is sent from the original forwarders to a consolidating forwarder, who then sends it to an indexer. However, in some circumstances, intermediate forwarders provide data indexing as well.

Q35. Mention some tips for optimization.

Answer: Some quick tips for optimization are as follows:

• Limiting the data from disk.
• Filtering as soon as possible.
• Using post-process searches in the dashboards.
• Making use of Fast Mode so as to increase the speed of searches by decreasing the event data that the search returns.
• Using summary indexing, report acceleration, and data model acceleration features.

Q36. What do you know about Splunk software?

Answer: Splunk software performs various tasks, including ingesting data, indexing events, processing data into events, and searching the indexed events. All these tasks, and the steps in-between, create data that is recorded into log files by the Splunk software.

Q37. What information is stored by an input channel?

Answer: An input channel stores the following information:

• The state of the line breaker
• State of the aggregator
• The settings in props. conf for the input
• Punct state

Q38. What is indexer acknowledgement ?

Answer: Indexer acknowledgment is a feature that helps in preventing the loss of data when data is sent to an indexer by the forwarders. Indexer acknowledgment is controlled by the Boolean useACK setting in inputs. conf and outputs. conf.

Q39. What is the reference hardware?

Answer: The reference hardware is a baseline used for scoping and scaling the Splunk platform for our use. Moreover, it is a performance guide that is used for handling search and indexing loads.

Q40. What does the the Daily Indexing Volume table show?

Answer: Well, the Daily Indexing Volume table shows the performance recommendations mentioned in the performance checklist. Moreover, the table shows the number of reference machines required to index and search data in Splunk Enterprise, based on the number of concurrent users and the amounts of data indexed by instance.

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