According to the Splunk SmartStore Architecture Guide, the primary benefit of SmartStore is the separation of storage from compute resources within an indexer cluster. SmartStore enables Splunk to decouple indexer storage (data at rest) from the compute layer (indexers that perform searches and indexing).

With SmartStore, active (hot/warm) data remains on local disk for fast access, while older, less frequently searched (remote) data is stored in an external object storage system such as Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or on-premises S3-compatible storage. This separation reduces the storage footprint on indexers, allowing organizations to scale compute and storage independently.

This architecture improves cost efficiency and scalability by:

Lowering on-premises storage costs using object storage for retention.

Enabling dynamic scaling of indexers without impacting total data availability.

Reducing replication overhead since SmartStore manages data objects efficiently.

SmartStore does not affect replication or search factors (Option A), does not handle Knowledge Object replication (Option C), and the Cluster Manager is still required (Option D) to coordinate cluster activities.

References (Splunk Enterprise Documentation):

• SmartStore Overview and Architecture Guide

• SmartStore Deployment and Configuration Manual

• Managing Storage and Compute Independence in Indexer Clusters

• Splunk Enterprise Capacity Planning – SmartStore Sizing Guidelines