Splunk Interview Questions
1. What is Splunk?
Splunk is a software or engine that can be used for searching, visualizing, monitoring, reporting, etc. of enterprise data. Splunk takes valuable machine data and converts it into powerful operational intelligence by providing real-time insights into the data through charts, alerts, reports, etc.
2. What are the types of Splunk dashboards?
There are 3 different types of Splunk dashboards, they are
- Real-time dashboards
- Dynamic form-based dashboards
- Dashboards for scheduled reports
3. What is Splunk App?
Splunk app is a container or a directory of configurations, searches, dashboards, etc. in Splunk.
4. Is Splunk SQL or NoSQL?
Splunk is a NoSQL database management system with a key value store data mode.
5. Name the types of search modes in Splunk.
Splunk supports 3 types of search modes or dashboards, they are
- Fast mode
- Smart mode
- Verbose mode
6. What is the key function of the Splunk Indexer?
The Splunk Indexer is used to create and manage indexes. There are the 2 main functions of the Splunk Indexer:
It is used to index raw data into an index.
It is used to search and manage the indexed data.
7. What is Splunk DB Connect?
Splunk DB Connect is a generic SQL database plugin for Splunk which allows the user to easily integrate database information with Splunk queries and reports.
8. Where is the Splunk Default Configuration stored?
The Splunk Default Configuration is stored at $splunkhome/etc/system/default
9. What command is used to stop and start Splunk service?
The command to start Splunk service is: ./splunk start
The command to stop Splunk service is: ./splunk stop
10. Who are the top direct competitors for Splunk?
Loggly, Logstash, LogLogic, Sumo Logic, etc. are some of the top direct competitors for Splunk.
11. What is the difference between Index time and Search time?
The index time is a period of time when the data is consumed and the point when it is written to disk. And the search time occurs when the search is run as events are composed by the search.
12. What is Source Type in Splunk?
The source type in Splunk is the way of identifying data.
13. What is MapReduce algorithm in Splunk?
MapReduce algorithm is the secret behind Splunk’s faster data searching. It is an algorithm which is typically used for batch-based large-scale parallelization. It is inspired by functional programming’s map() and reduce() functions.
14. What do Splunk Licenses specify?
Splunk licenses specify that how much data we can index per calendar day.
15. What do you understand by Btool in Splunk?
The Btool in Splunk is a command-line tool which is used for troubleshooting configuration file issues. It is also used to check which values are being used by a user’s Splunk Enterprise installation in the existing environment.
16. How the Splunk search history is cleared?
To clear the Splunk search history, we need to delete the following file from Splunk server:
$splunk_home/var/log/splunk/searches.log