SPLK-1003 Practice Exam Questions with Answers Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin Certification

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

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.

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

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.3.1/Admin/Configurationfiledirectories

Section titled, Configuration file directories, states "A detailed list of settings for each configuration file is provided in the .spec file names for that configuration file. You can find the latest version of the .spec and .example files in the $SPLUNK_HOME/etc system/README folder of your Splunk Enterprise installation..."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.2/Knowledge/Usedefaultfields splunk_server

The splunk server field contains the name of the Splunk server containing the event. Useful in a distributed Splunk environment. Example: Restrict a search to the main index on a server named remote. splunk_server=remote index=main 404

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."

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.

--reset Reset the fishbucket for the given key or file in the btree. Resetting the checkpoint for an active monitor input reindexes data, resulting in increased license use.https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.1/Troubleshooting/CommandlinetoolsforusewithSupport

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."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.1/Troubleshooting/Usebtooltotroubleshootconfigurations

"The btool command simulates the merging process using the on-disk conf files and creates a report showing the merged settings."

"The report does not necessarily represent what's loaded in memory. If a conf file change is made that requires a service restart, the btool report shows the change even though that change isn't active."

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."

"When ingesting event data, the measured data volume is based on the new raw data that is placed into the indexing pipeline. Because the data is measured at the indexing pipeline, data that is filetered and dropped prior to indexing does not count against the license volume qota."

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.6/Admin/HowSplunklicensingworks

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 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.

When configuring multiple LDAP strategies in Splunk, the order in which they are listed in the authentication.conf file determines the sequence in which Splunk searches them during authentication.

From the official Splunk documentation:

"To configure multiple LDAP strategies, set the authSettings setting to a comma-separated list of all strategies, in the order in which you want to query the strategies."

— Configure LDAP using configuration files - Splunk Documentation

Therefore, Splunk will search each LDAP strategy in the order specified in the authSettings parameter of the authentication.conf file.

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.

Referencehttps://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.3/Admin/Configurationparametersandthedatapipeline

 The parsing phase is the process of extracting fields and values from raw data. The parsing phase respects LINE_BREAKER, SHOULD_LINEMERGE, BREAK_ONLY_BEFORE_DATE, and all other line merging settings in props.conf. These settings determine how Splunk breaks the data into events based on certain criteria, such as timestamps or regular expressions. The event boundaries are defined by the props.conf file, which can be modified by the administrator. Therefore, the parsing phase is the last opportunity for defining event boundaries.

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.

"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"

The correct methods to connect a deployment client to a deployment server are A and C. You can either run the command splunk set deploy-poll : from the command line of the deployment client1 or create and edit a deploymentclient.conf file in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local on the deployment client2. Both methods require you to specify the IP address, hostname, and management port of the deployment server that you want the client to connect to.

Adding further clarity and quoting same Splunk reference URL from @giubal"

"To keep configuration settings consistent across peer nodes, configuration files are managed from the cluster master, which pushes the files to the slave-app directories on the peer nodes. Files in the slave-app directories have the highest precedence in a cluster peer's configuration. Here is the expanded precedence order for cluster peers:

1.Slave-app local directories -- highest priority

2. System local directory

3. App local directories

4. Slave-app default directories

5. App default directories

6. System default directory --lowest priority

IgnoreOlderThan:This setting filters files for indexing based on their age. It does not prevent indexing of old data already in the file.

allowList:This setting allows specifying patterns to include files for monitoring, but it does not control indexing of pre-existing data.

monitor:This is the default method for monitoring files but does not address indexing pre-existing data.

followTail:This attribute, when set in inputs.conf, ensures that Splunk starts reading a file from the end (tail) and does not index existing old data. It is ideal for scenarios with large files where only new updates are relevant.

In Splunk Enterprise, when you configure the server.conf file with strict pool quota=false, it means that license pools are allowed to share the total available license quota rather than being restricted to their individually allocated quotas. However, this does not prevent pools from issuing warnings if they exceed their allocated limits.

Given the environment with a 1000 GB/day license split into three pools:

Pool X: 500 GB/day license, 100 GB used

Pool Y: 350 GB/day license, 400 GB used

Pool Z: 150 GB/day license, 300 GB used

Let's analyze the usage:

Pool X is allocated 500 GB/day but has only used 100 GB, well within its limit.

Pool Y is allocated 350 GB/day but has used 400 GB, which exceeds its limit by 50 GB.

Pool Z is allocated 150 GB/day but has used 300 GB, which exceeds its limit by 150 GB.

Even with strict pool quota=false, pools Y and Z have exceeded their individual allocated quotas and will issue warnings. Pool X has not exceeded its quota and thus will not issue any warnings. Therefore, the pools that are issued warnings are Y and Z.

https://docs.splunk.com/Splexicon:Serverclass

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

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.

Search-time field extractions are the process of extracting fields from events after they are indexed. Search-time field extractions are specified on the search head, which is the Splunk component that handles searching and reporting. Search-time field extractions are configured in props.conf and transforms.conf files, which are located in the etc/system/local directory on the search head. Therefore, option D is the correct answer. References: Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin | Splunk, [About fields - Splunk Documentation]

The failOpen setting in the [duoMFA] stanza determines how Splunk software handles authentication requests when it cannot connect to the Duo Security service. If failOpen is set to True, as in this example, Splunk software allows users to log in without completing a multifactor challenge. If failOpen is set to False, Splunk software denies all logins when it cannot connect to Duo Security. This setting is independent of the authentication type or the secretKey protection. References = Connect to Duo Security for multifactor authentication

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.

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

You can have a role inherit certain properties from one or more existing rolehttps://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.5/Security/Aboutusersandroles

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/Data/Monitornetworkports

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://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

When there are conflicting settings within two or more configuration files, the setting with the highest precedence is used. The precedence of configuration files is determined by a combination of the file type, the directory location, and the alphabetical order of the file names.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.3/Admin/Distdeploylicenses#Clustered_deployments_and_licensing_issues

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."

According to the Splunk documentation1, to customize a configuration file, you need to create a new file with the same name in a local or app directory. Then, add the specific settings that you want to customize to the local configuration file. Never change or copy the configuration files in the default directory. The files in the default directory must remain intact and in their original location. The Splunk Enterprise upgrade process overwrites the default directory.

To deploy configuration files to deployment clients, you need to use the deployment server. The deployment server is a Splunk Enterprise instance that distributes content and updates to deployment clients2. The deployment server uses a directory called $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/deployment-apps to store the apps and configuration files that itdeploys to clients2. To update the configuration files in this directory, you need to edit them manually and then run the command $SPLUNK_HOME/bin/sp1unk reload deploy—server to make the changes take effect2.

Therefore, option A is incorrect because it does not include the reload command. Option B is incorrect because it makes the change on a deployment client instead of the deployment server. Option D is incorrect because it changes the default directory instead of the local directory.

This is explained in the Splunk documentation1, which states:

If an indexer goes down during a search, the search head notifies you that the results might be incomplete. The search head does not attempt to re-run the search on another indexer.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.2.2/DistSearch/Whatisdistributedsearch

Parallel reduce search processing If you struggle with extremely large high-cardinality searches, you might be able to apply parallel reduce processing to them to help them complete faster. You must have a distributed search environment to use parallel reduce search processing.

The coldPath parameter defines the path for the cold buckets, which are the oldest and least frequently accessed data in an index1. By setting the coldPath to point to the NAS mount point, the Splunk administrator can achieve the retention strategy of having older data on slower NAS storage.

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

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.2/Security/Dataintegritycontrol#:~:text=When%20you%20enable%20data%20integrity%20control%2C%20Splunk%20Enterprise%20computes%20hashes,it%20to%20a%20l1Hashes%20file.

When Splunk is integrated with LDAP, most of the user attributes are managed by the LDAP server and cannot be changed in the Splunk UI. However, one exception is the default app attribute, which specifies which app a user sees when they log in to Splunk. This attribute can be changed in the Splunk UI by editing the user settings. Therefore, option A is the correct answer. References: Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin | Splunk, [Configure Splunk to use LDAP and map groups - Splunk Documentation]