Top Splunk Interview Questions (2024) | CodeUsingJava
















Most frequently Asked Splunk Interview Questions


  1. What is Splunk?
  2. What are the Product Categories of Splunk?
  3. What are the Features of Splunk?
  4. Name the components of Splunk architecture?
  5. What are the different kinds of Splunk Forwarders?
  6. Explain how Splunk works?
  7. What are the stages of Splunk Indexing?
  8. Where is Splunk Default Configuration stored?
  9. Explain license violation in Splunk?
  10. What is the purpose of Splunk DB Connect?
  11. Name a few important Splunk search commands.
  12. Define Sourcetype in Splunk.
  13. How to parse JSON metrics array in Splunk?

What is Splunk?

Splunk is used for searching and analyzing machine data, it can come from applications, sensors, device or any other created by the use.It also helps in serving the needs of IT infrastructure by analyzing the logs generated in various processes and also it can also analyze structured and semi structured data with proper data modelling.
Splunk provides us data visualization on the search results, also has built in features for recognizing the data types and field separators and optimize the search processes.
Splunk helps in reading unstructured, semi-structured or rarely structured data, after reading the data it helps in allowing to search, tag, create reports and dashboards on these data.


What are the Product Categories of Splunk?

There are 3 types of product categories of Splunk:
  • Splunk Enterprise - helps in analyzing and gathering data from websites, application, devices and sensore.
  • Splunk Cloud - used by the cloud hosted platform with the features as the enterprise version.
  • Splunk Light - helps in allowing reports and alerting all data log data in real time from one place and has limited functionalities as compared to the other versions.

What are the Features of Splunk?

Data Ingestion - All the data can be modeled into a data structure as needed, it can also ingest a variety of data formats such as JSON, XML and data like web and application logs.
Data Indexing - All the ingested data is indexed by Splunk for fast searching and querying different conditions.
Data Searching - It involves using the data for the purpose of creating metrics, predicting future trends and identifying patterns in the data.
Using Alerts - Used for triggering email or RSS feeds when criterias are found in the data that is being analyzed.
Data Model - It leads in easy navigation by the end users who analyzes the buisness cases without learning the technicalities of the search of processing language used by splunk.


Name the components of Splunk architecture?

Search Head - Helps in providing GUI for searching.
Indexer - Helps in indexing the machine data.
Forwarder - Helps to forward logs to the indexer.
Deployment server - Helps in managing the splunk components in the distributed environment.


What are the different kinds of Splunk Forwarders?

There are two types of Splunk Forwarders:
Universal Forwarder
UF is a light weight agent installed by a non splunk system for gathering data locally.
Heavyweight Forwarder
HWF is a heavy weight agent containing functionalities, including parsing and indexing capabilities.


Explain how Splunk works?


Splunk

Forwarder helps by acting like a dumb agent that will collect data from the source and forward it to the indexer.
Indexer will help in storing the data locally in a host machine or on cloud.
Search Head helps in searching, analyzing, visualization and performing function on the data stored in the indexer.


What are the stages of Splunk Indexing?

Indexing incoming data, Searching the indexed data, Picture are the three stages of Splunk indexing.

Where is Splunk Default Configuration stored?

$splunkhome/etc/system/default


Explain license violation in Splunk?

License Violation acts like a warning that occurs when we exceed data limit, as the warning error will persist for 14 days.We may have 5 warning within 1 month rolling window befor which our indexer search results and reports stop triggering.
License Violation warning shows only 3 counts of warning.


What is the purpose of Splunk DB Connect?

Splunk DB Connect acts as generic SQL database plugin designed for splunk and also helps in enabling the users to integrate database information with splunk queries and reports seamlessly.

Name a few important Splunk search commands.

Splunk search commands name are as follows:
Abstract
Erex
Addtotals
Accum
Filldown
Typer
Rename
Anomalies


Define Sourcetype in Splunk.

Sourcetype is a default field that is used for identifying tha data structure of an incoming event, it should be set at the forwarder level for indexer extraction for helping identify different data formats.
Sourcetype helps in ensuring to assign the correct sourcetype to our data and also in searching, we should provide accurate timespace and event breaks to the indexed data.


How to parse JSON metrics array in Splunk?


[
    {
    "scId": "000DD2",
    "sensorId": 2,
    "metrics": [
        {
            "s": 5414,
            "dateTime": "2018-02-02T13:03:30+01:00"
        },
        {
            "s": 5526,
            "dateTime": "2018-02-02T13:04:56+01:00"
        },
        {
            "s": 5631,
            "dateTime": "2018-02-02T13:06:22+01:00"
        }
}, .... ]