SPLK-1003 Sample Questions Answers

A bucket is the object that stores events inside of an index. According to the Splunk documentation1, “An index is a collection of directories, also called buckets, that contain index files. Each bucket represents a specific time range.” A bucket can be in one of several states, such as hot, warm, cold, frozen, or thawed1. Buckets are managed by indexers or clusters of indexers1.

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

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

The app local directories move to second in the priority list. This is explained in the Splunk documentation, which states:

In a clustered environment, the precedence of configuration files changes slightly from that of a standalone deployment. The app local directories move to second in the priority list, after the peer-apps local directory. This means that any configuration files in the app local directories on the individual peers are overridden by configuration files of the same name and type in the peer-apps local directory on the master node.

"Where to place the scripts for scripted inputs. The script that you refer to in $SCRIPT can reside in only one of the following places on the host file system:

$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/bin

$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps//bin

$SPLUNK_HOME/bin/scripts

As a best practice, put your script in the bin/ directory that is nearest to the inputs.conf file that calls your script on the host file system."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/9.0.0/DistSearch/Distributedsearchgroups

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

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."

This option corresponds to the file path “$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/splunk_TA_nginx/local/inputs.conf”. This is the configuration file that the user needs to edit to ingest the NGINX access logs to ensure it remains unaffected after upgrade. This is explained in the Splunk documentation, which states:

The local directory is where you place your customized configuration files. The local directory is empty when you install Splunk Enterprise. You create it when you need to override or add to the default settings in a configuration file. The local directory is never overwritten during an upgrade.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.3/DistSearch/Distributedsearchgroups

In Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Universal Forwarder, data inputs are configured using stanzas in inputs.conf. Each stanza defines a listener for a particular input type (for example, TCP or UDP) and a specific port.

Splunk documentation states that a single TCP input stanza can receive data from multiple remote hosts sending to the same TCP port, and similarly, a single UDP input stanza can receive data from multiple devices sending to the same UDP port. Therefore, the number of sending devices does not determine the number of stanzas required; rather, the input protocol and port type do.

In this case:

All three TCP devices can send data to one TCP port (one stanza).

All four UDP devices can send data to one UDP port (one stanza).

Thus, the minimum number of input stanzas required is two — one for TCP and one for UDP.

Example configuration (inputs.conf):

# TCP input for three switches sending via TCP

[tcp://9997]

sourcetype = switch_logs

# UDP input for four switches sending via UDP

[udp://514]

sourcetype = switch_logs

This configuration ensures all seven devices’ logs are collected without creating individual stanzas for each device.

Reference (Splunk Documentation):

Splunk® Enterprise Admin Manual → Configure Data Inputs → “Listen for network data”

inputs.conf.spec and example → “You can configure a single TCP or UDP input to receive data from multiple remote hosts.”

Splunk Universal Forwarder Manual → Configure Forwarding Inputs → “Universal Forwarders can listen on a single TCP or UDP port for multiple remote data sources.”

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 answer is D. The timezone of the forwarder will be added to the event as part of indexing.

According to the Splunk documentation1, Splunk software determines the time zone to assign to a timestamp using the following logic in order of precedence:

Use the time zone specified in raw event data (for example, PST, -0800), if present.

Use the TZ attribute set in props.conf, if the event matches the host, source, or source type that the stanza specifies.

If the forwarder and the receiving indexer are version 6.0 or higher, use the time zone that the forwarder provides.

Use the time zone of the host that indexes the event.

In this case, the event does not have a time zone specified in the raw data, nor does it have a TZ attribute set in props.conf. Therefore, the next rule applies, which is to use the time zone that the forwarder provides. A universal forwarder is a lightweight agent that can forward data to a Splunk deployment, and it knows its systemtime zone and sends that information along with the events to the indexer2. The indexer then converts the event time to UTC and stores it in the _time field1.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) is not the time zone that Splunk adds to the event as part of indexing, but rather the time zone that Splunk uses to store the event time in the _time field. Splunk software converts the event time to UTC based on the time zone that it determines from the rules above1.

B. The timezone of the search head is not relevant for indexing, as the search head is a Splunk component that handles search requests and distributes them to indexers, but it does not process incoming data3. The search head uses the user’s timezone setting to determine the time range in UTC that should be searched and to display the timestamp of the results in the user’s timezone2.

C. The timezone of the indexer that indexed the event is only used as a last resort, if none of the other rules apply. In this case, the forwarder provides the time zone information, so the indexer does not use its own time zone1.

Splunk checks role-to-group mapping only during user login for external authentication (e.g., LDAP, SAML). Users already logged in will continue using their previously assigned roles until they log out and log back in.

The changes to role mapping do not disrupt ongoing sessions.

Incorrect Options:

B:Search is not disabled upon role updates.

C:This is incorrect since existing users are also updated upon the next login.

D:Role updates do not terminate ongoing sessions.

The next step to enable the communication between the forwarder and the deployment server after installing a new forwarder with a manually created deploymentclient.conf is to restart Splunk on the deployment client. The deploymentclient.conf file contains the settings for the deployment client, which is a Splunk instance that receives updates from the deployment server. The file must include the targetUri attribute, which specifies the hostname and management port of the deployment server. To apply the changes in the deploymentclient.conf file, Splunk must be restarted on the deployment client. Therefore, option C is the correct answer. References: Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin | Splunk, [Configure deployment clients - Splunk Documentation]

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.1/DistSearch/SHCarchitecture

Scroll down to section titled, How the cluster handles concurrent search quotas, "Overall search quota. This quota determines the maximum number of historical searches (combined scheduled and ad hoc) that the cluster can run concurrently. This quota is configured with max_Searches_per_cpu and related settings in limits.conf."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.4/Admin/Propsconf#props.conf.spec

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.1/Admin/Propsconf

"* Reuse of the same field-extracting regular expression across multiple sources, source types, or hosts."https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.4/Admin/Propsconf#props.conf.spec

To verify the integrity of a local bucket. The command ./splunk check-integrity -bucketPath [bucket path] [-verbose] is used to verify the integrity of a local bucket by comparing the hashes stored in the l1Hashes and l2Hash files with the actual data in the bucket1. This command can help detect any tampering or corruption of the data.

Data integrity controls in Splunk ensure that indexed data has not been tampered with.

When enabled, Splunk calculates hashes for each bucket and stores these hash files in the rawdata directory of the corresponding bucket.

Incorrect Options:

A, C, D:These directories do not store hash files.

This is because the input type is UDP, which is an unreliable protocol that does not guarantee delivery, order, or integrity of the data packets. UDP does not have any mechanism to resend or acknowledge the data packets, so if Splunk is restarted, any data that was in transit or in the buffer may be dropped and not indexed.

According to the Splunk documentation1, to manually specify a character set for an input, you need to set the CHARSET key in the props.conf file. You can specify the character set by host, source, or sourcetype, but not by index.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Data/Configurecharactersetencoding

"You can group your search peers to facilitate searching on a subset of them. Groups of search peers are known as "distributed search groups." You specify distributed search groups in the distsearch.conf file"

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.

Using the provided DUO/Splunk reference URLhttps://duo.com/docs/splunk

Scroll down to the Network Diagram section and note the following 6 similar steps

1 - SPlunk connection initiated

2 - Primary authentication

3 - Splunk connection established to Duo Security over TCP port 443

4 - Secondary authentication via Duo Security's service

5 - Splunk receives authentication response

6 - Splunk session logged in.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.2/Admin/Distdeploylicenses#:~:text=License%20requirements,do%20not%20index%20external%20data.

"All Splunk Enterprise instances functioning as management components needs access to an Enterprise license. Management components include the deployment server, the indexer cluster manager node, the search head cluster deployer, and the monitoring console."

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."

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

The indexing pipeline and the parsing pipeline are the two pipelines that are responsible for transforming the raw data into events and preparing them for indexing. The indexing pipeline applies index-time settings, such as timestamp extraction, line breaking, host extraction, and source type recognition. The parsing pipeline applies parsing settings, such as field extraction, event segmentation, and event annotation.

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.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.5/Updating/Updateconfigurations First line says it all: "The deployment server distributes deployment apps to clients."

The correct answer is C. On Deployment Server, $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/deployment-apps.

A deployment server is a Splunk Enterprise instance that acts as a centralized configuration manager for any number of other instances, called “deployment clients”. A deployment client can be a universal forwarder, a non-clustered indexer, or a search head1.

A deployment app is a directory that contains any content that you want to download to a set of deployment clients. The content can include a Splunk Enterprise app, a set of Splunk Enterprise configurations, or other content, such as scripts, images, and supporting files2.

You create a deployment app by creating a directory for it on the deployment server. The default location is $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/deployment-apps, but this is configurable through the repositoryLocation attribute in serverclass.conf. Underneath this location, each app must have its own subdirectory. The name of the subdirectory serves as the app name in the forwarder management interface2.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. On Universal Forwarder, $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps. This is the location where the deployment app resides after it is downloaded from the deployment server to the universal forwarder. It is not the location of the app before it is deployed2.

B. On Deployment Server, $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps. This is the location where the apps that are specific to the deployment server itself reside. It is not the location where the deployment apps for the clients are stored2.

D. On Universal Forwarder, $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/deployment-apps. This is not a valid location for any app on a universal forwarder. The universal forwarder does not act as a deployment server and does not store deployment apps3.

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..."

The correct answer is D. Place both props . conf and transforms . conf on the Heavy Forwarder for source A, and place both props . conf and transforms . conf on the indexer for source B.

According to the Splunk documentation1, to mask sensitive data from raw events, you need to use the SEDCMD attribute in the props.conf file and the REGEX attribute in the transforms.conf file. The SEDCMD attribute applies a sed expression to the raw data before indexing, while the REGEX attribute defines a regular expression to match the data to bemasked.You need to place these files on the Splunk instance that parses the data, which isusually the indexer or the heavy forwarder2. The universal forwarder does not parse the data, so it does not need these files.

For source A, the data is routed through a heavy forwarder, which can parse the data before sending it to the indexer. Therefore, you need to place both props.conf and transforms.conf on the heavy forwarder for source A, so that the masking takes place before indexing.

For source B, the data is routed directly to the indexer, which parses and indexes the data. Therefore, you need to place both props.conf and transforms.conf on the indexer for source B, so that the masking takes place before indexing.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.1/Data/Monitornetworkports

To remove a search peer from a search head in a distributed search environment using the CLI, Splunk provides the splunk remove search-server command. This command is executed on the search head and removes the specified search peer from its configuration.

The correct syntax for this command is:

splunk remove search-server -auth : :

Where:

: are the credentials for the search head.

: specifies the management port of the search peer to be removed.

For example:

bash

CopyEdit

splunk remove search-server -auth admin:password 123.45.67.89:8089

This command removes the search peer from the search head's configuration. It's important to note that this action does not affect the search peer itself; it merely removes the association from the search head.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.1/Updating/Filterclients

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

Per the provided Splunk reference URL

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

"While HEC has precautions in place to prevent data loss, it's impossible to completely prevent such an occurrence, especially in the event of a network failure or hardware crash. This is where indexer acknolwedgment comes in."

Reference https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.5/Data/AboutHECIDXAck

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.1/DistSearch/Howuserscancontroldistributedsearches

"From the user standpoint, specifying and running a distributed search is essentially the same as running any other search. Behind the scenes, the search head distributes the query to its search peers, and consolidates the results when presenting them to the user."

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.

 The setting that allows the configuration of Splunk to allow events to span over more than one line is SHOULD_LINEMERGE. This setting determines whether consecutive lines from a single source should be concatenated into a single event. If SHOULD_LINEMERGE is set to true, Splunk will attempt to merge multiple lines into one event based on certain criteria, such as timestamps or regular expressions. Therefore, option A is the correct answer. References: Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin | Splunk, [Configure event line merging - Splunk Documentation]

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

Scrolling down to the section titled "Define the sed script in props.conf shows the correct syntax of an example which validates that the number/character /1 immediately preceded the /g

Users log on to the search head and run reports: – The search head dispatches searches to the peers – Peers run searches in parallel and return their portion of results – The search head consolidates the individual results and prepares reports

https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/tips-and-tricks/what-is-this-fishbucket-thing.html

"Every Splunk instance has a fishbucket index, except the lightest of hand-tuned lightweight forwarders, and if you index a lot of files it can get quite large. As any other index, you can change the retention policy to control the size via indexes.conf"

Reference https://community.splunk.com/t5/Archive/How-to-reindex-data-from-a-forwarder/td-p/93310

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.6/Security/ManageSplunkuserroleswithLDAP

The correct answer is D. No, because the event time is greater than the retention time.

According to the Splunk documentation1, the frozenTimePeriodInSecs setting in indexes.conf determines how long Splunk software retains indexed data before deleting it or archiving it to a remote storage. The default value is 188697600 seconds, which is equivalent to six years. The setting can be overridden on a per-index basis.

In this case, the cat_facts index has a frozenTimePeriodInSecs setting of 2630000 seconds, which is equivalent to about 30 days. This means that any event that is older than 30 days from the current time will be removed from the index and will not be searchable.

The event timestamp was 3739283 seconds ago, which is equivalent to about 43 days. This means that the event is older than the retention time of the cat_facts index and will not be searchable.

The other settings in the stanza, such as maxHotSpanSecs and maxTota1DataSizeMB, do not affect the retention time of the events. They only affect the size and duration of the buckets that store the events.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Forwarder/8.0.5/Forwarder/Configuretheuniversalforwarder

--Key configuration files are: inputs.conf controls how the forwarder collects data. outputs.conf controls how the forwarder sends data to an indexer or other forwarder server.conf for connection and performance tuning deploymentclient.conf for connecting to a deployment server

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."