SPLK-1003 Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin Exam Questions and Answers

The answer to your question is C. services/data/collector. This is the endpoint URI used to collect data in a customer managed Splunk Enterprise environment.According to the Splunk documentation1, “The HTTP Event Collector REST API endpoint is /services/data/collector.You can use this endpoint to send events to HTTP Event Collector on a Splunk Enterprise or Splunk Cloud Platform deployment.” You can also use this endpoint to send events to a specific token or index1. For example, you can use thefollowing curl command to send an event with the token 578254cc-05f5-46b5-957b-910d1400341a and the index main:

curl -k https://localhost:8088/services/data/collector -H 'Authorization: Splunk 578254cc-05f5-46b5-957b-910d1400341a'-d'{"index":"main","event":"Hello, world!"}'

According to the Splunk system admin course PDF, When adding native users, Username and Password ARE REQUIRED

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.

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.

homePath = $SPLUNK_DB/hatchdb/db

coldPath = $SPLUNK_DB/hatchdb/colddb

thawedPath = $SPLUNK_DB/hatchdb/thaweddb

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Admin/Indexesconf

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.1/Admin/Indexesconf#PER_INDEX_OPTIONS

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

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.3/Data/Monitornetworkports

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Indexer/Setaretirementandarchivingpolicy

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.

References:

• 1: Configure inputs using Splunk Connect for Syslog - Splunk Documentation
• 2: inputs.conf - Splunk Documentation
• 3: How to configure props.conf for proper line breaking … - Splunk Community
• 4: Reliable syslog/tcp input – splunk bundle style | Splunk
• 5: Configure inputs using Splunk Connect for Syslog - Splunk Documentation
• 6: About configuration files - Splunk Documentation
• [7]: Configure your OSSEC server to send data to the Splunk Add-on for OSSEC - Splunk Documentation
• [8]: Splunk components - Splunk Documentation
• [9]: Syslog - Wikipedia
• [10]: About default fields - Splunk Documentation

The correct answer is B. The network input in Splunk might be found in the $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/$appName/local/inputs.conf file.

A network input is a type of input that monitors data from TCP or UDP ports. To configure a network input, you need to specify the port number, the connection host, the source, and the sourcetype in the inputs.conf file.You can also set other optional settings, such as index, queue, and host_regex1.

The inputs.conf file is a configuration file that contains the settings for different types of inputs, such as files, directories, scripts, network ports, and Windows event logs. The inputs.conf file can be located in various directories, depending on the scope and priority of the settings. The most common locations are:

• $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default: This directory contains the default settings for all inputs.You should not modify or copy the files in this directory2.
• $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local: This directory contains the custom settings for all inputs that apply to the entire Splunk instance.The settings in this directory override the default settings2.
• $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/$appName/default: This directory contains the default settings for all inputs that are specific to an app.You should not modify or copy the files in this directory2.
• $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/$appName/local: This directory contains the custom settings for all inputs that are specific to an app.The settings in this directory override the default and system settings2.

Therefore, the best practice is to create or edit the inputs.conf file in the $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/$appName/local directory, where $appName is the name of the app that you want to configure the network input for. This way, you can avoid modifying the default files and ensure that your settings are applied to the specific app.

The other options are incorrect because:

• A. There is no network directory under the apps directory. The network input settings should be in the inputs.conf file, not in a separate directory.
• C. There is no udp.conf file in Splunk. The network input settings should be in the inputs.conf file, not in a separate file. The system directory is not the recommended location for custom settings, as it affects the entire Splunk instance.
• D. The var/lib/splunk directory is where Splunk stores the indexed data, not the input settings. The homePath setting is used to specify the location of the index data, not the input data. The inputName is not a valid variable for inputs.conf.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Forwarding/Protectagainstlossofin-flightdata#:~:text=The%20default%20for%20the%20maxQueueSize,wait%20queue%20size%20is%2021MB .

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Forwarding/Protectagainstlossofin-flightdata

 [monitor::/opt/log/crashlog/Jan27crash.txt]. This stanza means that Splunk is monitoring a single local file named Jan27crash.txt in the /opt/log/crashlog/ directory1. The monitor input type is used to monitor files and directories for changes and index any new data that is added2.

curl “https://mysplunkserver.example.com:8088/services/collector” \ -H “Authorization: Splunk DF4S7ZE4-3GS1-8SFS-E777-0284GG91PF67” \ -d ‘{“event”: “Hello World”}, {“event”: “Hola Mundo”}, {“event”: “Hallo Welt”}’. This is the correct curl command to send multiple events through HTTP Event Collector (HEC), which is a token-based API that allows you to send data to Splunk Enterprise from any application that can make an HTTP request. The command has the following components:

• The URL of the HEC endpoint, which consists of the protocol (https), the hostname or IP address of the Splunk server (mysplunkserver.example.com), the port number (8088), and the service name (services/collector).
• The header that contains the authorization token, which is a unique identifier that grants access to the HEC endpoint. The token is prefixed with Splunk and enclosed in quotation marks. The token value (DF4S7ZE4-3GS1-8SFS-E777-0284GG91PF67) is an example and should be replaced with your own token value.
• The data payload that contains the events to be sent, which are JSON objects enclosed in curly braces and separated by commas. Each event object has a mandatory field called event, which contains the raw data to be indexed. The event value can be a string, a number, a boolean, an array, or another JSON object. In this case, the event values are strings that say hello in different languages.

 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/Forwarder/8.2.1/Forwarder/HowtoforwarddatatoSplunkE nterprise

"You can collect data on the universal forwarder using several methods. Define inputs on the universal forwarder with the CLI. You can use the CLI to define inputs on the universal forwarder. After you define the inputs, the universal forwarder collects data based on those definitions as long as it has access to the data that you want to monitor. Define inputs on the universal forwarder with configuration files. If the input you want to configure does not have a CLI argument for it, you can configure inputs with configuration files. Create an inputs.conf file in the directory, $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local

A role in Splunk is a classification that determines what capabilities and indexes a user has.A capability is a permission to perform a specific action or access a specific feature on the Splunk platform1.An index is a collection of data that Splunk software processes and stores2. By assigning roles to users, you can control what they can do and what data they can access on the Splunk platform.

Therefore, the correct answers are A and D. A role in Splunk determines what capabilities and indexes a user has. Option B is incorrect because Splunk servers do not use roles to remotely control each other.Option C is incorrect because Splunk servers use instances and components to determine what functions they control3.

References:1:Define roles on the Splunk platform with capabilities - Splunk Documentation2:About indexes and indexers - Splunk Documentation3:Splunk Enterprise components - Splunk Documentation

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

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.5/Deploy/Datapipeline

"In the input segment, Splunk software consumes data. It acquires the raw data stream from its source, breaks in into 64K blocks, and annotates each block with some metadata keys."

According to the Splunk documentation1, a heavy forwarder is a Splunk Enterprise instance that can parse and filter data before forwarding it to an indexer. A heavy forwarder can perform line breaking, which is the process of splitting incoming data into individual events based on a set of rules2. A heavy forwarder can also apply other transformations to the data, such as field extractions, event type matching, or masking sensitive data3.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation /Splunk/8.1.1/DistSearch/Forwardsearchheaddata

Per the provided Splunk reference URL by @hwangho, scroll to section Forward search head data, subsection titled, 2. Configure the search head as a forwarder. "Create an outputs.conf file on the search head that configures the search head for load-balanced forwarding across the set of search peers (indexers)."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.0.3/Forwarding/Routeandfilterdatad#Perform_selective_indexing_and_forwarding

Specifies a comma-separated list of tcpout group names. Use this setting to selectively forward your data to specific indexers by specifying the tcpout groups that the forwarder should use when forwarding the data. Define the tcpout group names in the outputs.conf file in [tcpout:] stanzas. The groups present in defaultGroup in [tcpout] stanza in the outputs.conf file.

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

Scroll down to the section Titled, How to configure forwarder inputs, and subsection Here are the main ways that you can configure data inputs on a forwarder Install the app or add-on that contains the inputs you wants

Set the stanza to have a server value equal to a comma-separated list of IP addresses and indexer ports for each of the indexers in the environment. This is explained in the Splunk documentation1, which states:

To enable automatic load balancing, set the stanza to have a server value equal to a comma-separated list of IP addresses and indexer ports for each of the indexers in the environment. For example:

[tcpout] server=10.1.1.1:9997,10.1.1.2:9997,10.1.1.3:9997

The forwarder then distributes data across all of the indexers in the list.

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

https://www.splunk.com/en_u s/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/latest/Admin/Outputsconf

# Compression

#

# This example sends compressed events to the remote indexer.

# NOTE: Compression can be enabled TCP or SSL outputs only.

# The receiver input port should also have compression enabled.

[tcpout]

server = splunkServer.example.com:4433

compressed = true

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.0/Data/ConsiderationsfordecidinghowtomonitorWindowsdata

"The Splunk platform collects remote Windows data for indexing in one of two ways: From Splunk forwarders, Using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). For Splunk Cloud deployments, you must use the Splunk Universal Forwarder on a Windows machines to montior remote Windows data."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.1/Indexer/HowSplunkstoresindexes

Once further conditions are met (for example, the index reaches some maximum number of warm buckets), the indexer begins to roll the warm buckets to cold, based on their age. It alwaysselects the oldest warm bucket to roll to cold. Buckets continue to roll to cold as they age in this manner. Cold buckets reside in a different location from hot and warm buckets. You can configure the location so that cold buckets reside on cheaper storage.

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

Attribute : SHOULD_LINEMERGE = [true|false]

Description : When set to true, the Splunk platform combines several input lines into a single event, with configuration based on the settings described in the next section.

• A Splunk deployment server is a system that distributes apps, configurations, and other assets to groups of Splunk Enterprise instances. You can use it to distribute updates to most types of Splunk Enterprise components: forwarders, non-clustered indexers, and search heads2.
• A Splunk deployment server is available on every full Splunk Enterprise instance. To use it, you must activate it by placing at least one app into %SPLUNK_HOME%\etc\deployment-apps on the host you want to act as deployment server3.
• A Splunk deployment server maintains the list of server classes and uses those server classes to determine what content to distribute to each client. A server class is a group of deployment clients that share one or more defined characteristics1.
• A Splunk deployment client is a Splunk instance remotely configured by a deployment server. Deployment clients can be universal forwarders, heavy forwarders, indexers, or search heads. Each deployment client belongs to one or more server classes1.
• A Splunk deployment app is a set of content (including configuration files) maintained on the deployment server and deployed as a unit to clients of a server class. A deployment app can be an existing Splunk Enterprise app or one developed solely to group some content for deployment purposes1.

Therefore, option C is correct, and the other options are incorrect.

https://docs.splunk.com/D ocumentation/Splunk/8.0.4/Data/Whitelistorblacklistspecificincomingdata

"It is not necessary to define both an allow list and a deny list in a configuration stanza. The settings are independent. If you do define both filters and a file matches them both, Splunk Enterprise does not index that file, as the blacklist filter overrides the whitelist filter." Source:https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/S plunk/8.1.0/Data/Whitelistorblacklistspecificincomingdata

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.

The correct answer is C. /var/log/host_460352847/bar/file/foo.txt.

The monitor stanza in inputs.conf is used to configure Splunk to monitor files and directories for new data.The monitor stanza has the following syntax1:

[monitor://]

The input path can be a file or a directory, and it can include wildcards (*) and regular expressions. The wildcards match any number of characters, including none, while the regular expressions match patterns of characters.The input path is case-sensitive and must be enclosed in double quotes if it contains spaces1.

In this case, the input path is /var/log//bar/.txt, which means Splunk will monitor any file with the .txt extension that is located in a subdirectory named bar under the /var/log directory.The subdirectory bar can be at any level under the /var/log directory, and the * wildcard will match any characters before or after the bar and .txt parts1.

Therefore, the file /var/log/host_460352847/bar/file/foo.txt will be matched by the monitor stanza, as it meets the criteria. The other files will not be matched, because:

• A. /var/log/host_460352847/temp/bar/file/csv/foo.txt has a .csv extension, not a .txt extension.
• B. /var/log/host_460352847/bar/foo.txt is not located in a subdirectory under the bar directory, but directly in the bar directory.
• D. /var/log/host_460352847/temp/bar/file/foo.txt is located in a subdirectory named file under the bar directory, not directly in the bar directory.

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 system time 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.

Quoting the following Splunk URL reference https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.2/DMC/DMCprerequisites "Monitoring Console setup prerequisites. Forward internal logs (both $SPLUNK_HOME/car/log/splunk and $SPLUNK_HOME/var/log/introspection) to indexers from all other components. Without this step, many dashboards will lack data."

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

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.2/Admin/Aboutlicenseviolations

"An Enterprise license stack with a license volume of 100 GB of data per day or more does not currently violate."

"The search head replicates the knowledge bundle periodically in the background or when initiating a search. " "As part of the distributed search process, the search head replicates and distributes its knowledge objects to its search peers, or indexers. Knowledge objects include saved searches, event types, and other entities used in searching accorss indexes. The search head needs to distribute this material to its search peers so that they can properly execute queries on its behalf."

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."