Pass the Splunk Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect SPLK-2002 Questions and answers with CertsForce

As a best practice, the internal licensing logs should be stored on the license server. The license server is a Splunk instance that manages the distribution and enforcement of licenses in a Splunk deployment. The license server generates internal licensing logs that contain information about the license usage, violations, warnings, and pools. The internal licensing logs should be stored on the license server itself, because they are relevant to the license server’s role and function. Storing the internal licensing logs on the license server also simplifies the license monitoring and troubleshooting process. The internal licensing logs should not be stored on the indexing layer, the deployment layer, or the search head layer, because they are not related to the roles and functions of these layers. Storing the internal licensing logs on these layers would also increase the network traffic and disk space consumption

 The Splunk Universal Forwarder is the only Splunk Enterprise offering that has its own license. The Splunk Universal Forwarder license allows the forwarder to send data to any Splunk Enterprise or Splunk Cloud instance without consuming any license quota. The Splunk Heavy Forwarder does not have its own license, but rather consumes the license quota of the Splunk Enterprise or Splunk Cloud instance that it sends data to. The Splunk Cloud Forwarder and the Splunk Forwarder Management are not separate Splunk Enterprise offerings, but rather features of the Splunk Cloud service. For more information, see [About forwarder licensing] in the Splunk documentation.

The system local directory has the highest precedence among the following directories that contain Splunk configuration files of the same name within different apps. Splunk configuration files are stored in various directories under the SPLUNK_HOME/etc directory. The precedence of these directories determines which configuration file settings take effect when there are conflicts or overlaps. The system local directory, which is located at SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local, has the highest precedence among all directories, because it contains the system-level configurations that are specific to the instance. The system default directory, which is located at SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default, has the lowest precedence among all directories, because it contains the system-level configurations that are provided by Splunk and should not be modified. The app local directories, which are located at SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/APP_NAME/local, have a higher precedence than the app default directories, which are located at SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/APP_NAME/default, because the local directories contain the app-level configurations that are specific to the instance, while the default directories contain the app-level configurations that are provided by the app and should not be modified. The app local and default directories have different precedences depending on the ASCII order of the app names, with the app names that come later in the ASCII order having higher precedences.

Primary rebalancing automatically occurs when a rolling restart completes, a master node rejoins the cluster, or a peer node joins or rejoins the cluster. These events can cause the distribution of primary buckets to become unbalanced, so the master node will initiate a rebalancing process to ensure that each peer node has roughly the same number of primary buckets. Primary rebalancing does not occur when a captain joins or rejoins the cluster, because the captain is a search head cluster component, not an indexer cluster component. The captain is responsible for search head clustering, not indexer clustering

Of the following types of files within an index bucket, the rawdata file type may consume the most disk. The rawdata file type contains the compressed and encrypted raw data that Splunk has ingested. The rawdata file type is usually the largest file type in a bucket, because it stores the original data without any filtering or extraction. The bloom filter file type contains a probabilistic data structure that is used to determine if a bucket contains events that match a given search. The bloom filter file type is usually very small, because it only stores a bit array of hashes. The metadata (.data) file type contains information about the bucket properties, such as the earliest and latest event timestamps, the number of events, and the size of the bucket. The metadata file type is also usually very small, because it only stores a few lines of text. The inverted index (.tsidx) file type contains the time-series index that maps the timestamps and event IDs of the raw data. The inverted index file type can vary in size depending on the number and frequency of events, but it is usually smaller than the rawdata file type

In the context of splunkd.log events written to the _internal index, the field that identifies the specific log channel is the "channel" field. This information is confirmed by the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) documentation, where "channel" is listed as a field name associated with Splunk Audit Logs​​.

To resync a stale KV Store member in a search head cluster, you need to stop the search head that has the stale KV Store member, run the command splunk clean kvstore --local, and then restart the search head. This triggers the initial synchronization from other KV Store members12.

The command splunk resync kvstore [-source sourceId] is used to resync the entire KV Store cluster from one of the members, not a single member. This command can only be invoked from the node that is operating as search head cluster captain2.

The command splunk clean eventdata -local is used to delete all indexed data from a standalone indexer or a cluster peer node, not to resync the KV Store3.

References:

1: How to resolve error on a search head member in the search head cluster …

2: Resync the KV store - Splunk Documentation

3: Delete indexed data - Splunk Documentation

Splunk indexing is read/write intensive, as it involves reading data from various sources, writing data to disk, and reading data from disk for searching and reporting. Therefore, it is important to select the appropriate disk storage solution for each deployment, based on the performance, reliability, and cost requirements. The recommended RAID setup for Splunk indexers is RAID 10 (1 + 0), as it provides the best balance of performance and reliability. RAID 10 combines the advantages of RAID 1 (mirroring) and RAID 0 (striping), which means that it offers both data redundancy and data distribution. RAID 10 can tolerate multiple disk failures, as long as they are not in the same mirrored pair, and it can improve the read and write speed, as it can access multiple disks in parallel2

High performance SAN (Storage Area Network) can be used for Splunk indexers, but it is not recommended, as it is more expensive and complex than local disks. SAN also introduces additional network latency and dependency, which can affect the performance and availability of Splunk indexers. SAN is more suitable for Splunk search heads, as they are less read/write intensive and more CPU intensive2

NFS (Network File System) should not be used for storing hot and warm buckets, as it can cause data corruption, data loss, and performance degradation. NFS is a network-based file system that allows multiple clients to access the same files on a remote server. NFS is not compatible with Splunk index replication and search head clustering, as it can cause conflicts and inconsistencies among the Splunk instances. NFS is also slower and less reliable than local disks, as it depends on the network bandwidth and availability. NFS can be used for storing cold and frozen buckets, as they are less frequently accessed and less critical for Splunk operations2

Virtualized environments are not usually preferred over bare metal for Splunk indexers, as they can introduce additional overhead and complexity. Virtualized environments can affect the performance and reliability of Splunk indexers, as they share the physical resources and the network with other virtual machines. Virtualized environments can also complicate the monitoring and troubleshooting of Splunk indexers, as they add another layer of abstraction and configuration. Virtualized environments can be used for Splunk indexers, but they require careful planning and tuning to ensure optimal performance and availability2

The following statements describe a search head cluster captain:

Is the job scheduler for the entire search head cluster. The captain is responsible for scheduling and dispatching the searches that run on the search head cluster, as well as coordinating the search results from the search peers. The captain also ensures that the scheduled searches are balanced across the search head cluster members and that the search concurrency limits are enforced.

Replicates the search head cluster’s knowledge bundle to the search peers. The captain is responsible for creating and distributing the knowledge bundle to the search peers, which contains the knowledge objects that are required for the searches. The captain also ensures that the knowledge bundle is consistent and up-to-date across the search head cluster and the search peers. The following statements do not describe a search head cluster captain:

Manages alert action suppressions (throttling). Alert action suppressions are the settings that prevent an alert from triggering too frequently or too many times. These settings are managed by the search head that runs the alert, not by the captain. The captain does not have any special role in managing alert action suppressions.

Synchronizes the member list with the KV store primary. The member list is the list of search head cluster members that are active and available. The KV store primary is the search head cluster member that is responsible for replicating the KV store data to the other members. These roles are not related to the captain, and the captain does not synchronize them. The member list and the KV store primary are determined by the RAFT consensus algorithm, which is independent of the captain election. For more information, see [About the captain and the captain election] and [About KV store and search head clusters] in the Splunk documentation.

 An indexer clustering requirement is that the cluster members must share the same license pool and license master. A license pool is a group of licenses that are assigned to a set of Splunk instances. A license master is a Splunk instance that manages the distribution and enforcement of licenses in a pool. In an indexer cluster, all cluster members must belong to the same license pool and report to the same license master, to ensure that the cluster does not exceed the license limit and that the license violations are handled consistently. An indexer cluster does not require shared storage, because each cluster member has its own local storage for the index data. An indexer cluster does not have to reside on a dedicated rack, because the cluster members can be located on different physical or virtual machines, as long as they can communicate with each other. An indexer cluster does not have to have at least three members, because a cluster can have as few as two members, although this is not recommended for high availability