Deck 5: Splunk Enterprise Security Certified Admin

Question 1

A customer has installed a 500GB Enterprise license. They also purchased and installed a 300GB, no enforcement license on the same license master. How much data can the customer ingest before search is locked out?

A) 300GB. After this limit, search is locked out.
B) 500GB. After this limit, search is locked out.
C) 800GB. After this limit, search is locked out.
D) Search is not locked out. Violations are still recorded.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

At which default interval does metrics.log generate a periodic report regarding license utilization?

A) 10 seconds
B) 30 seconds
C) 60 seconds
D) 300 seconds

Answer 2

B

Question 3

A new Splunk customer is using syslog to collect data from their network devices on port 514. What is the best practice for ingesting this data into Splunk?

A) Configure syslog to send the data to multiple Splunk indexers.
B) Use a Splunk indexer to collect a network input on port 514 directly.
C) Use a Splunk forwarder to collect the input on port 514 and forward the data.
D) Configure syslog to write logs and use a Splunk forwarder to collect the logs.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

A multi-site indexer cluster can be configured using which of the following? (Select all that apply.)

A) Via Splunk Web.
B) Directly edit SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/server.conf Directly edit SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/server.conf
C) Run a splunk edit cluster-config command from the CLI. Run a splunk edit cluster-config command from the CLI.
D) Directly edit SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default/server.conf SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default/server.conf

Question 5

To activate replication for an index in an indexer cluster, what attribute must be configured in indexes.conf on all peer nodes?

A) repFactor = 0
B) replicate = 0
C) repFactor = auto
D) replicate = auto

Question 6

Which Splunk server role regulates the functioning of indexer cluster?

A) Indexer
B) Deployer
C) Master Node
D) Monitoring Console

Question 7

Which of the following security options must be explicitly configured (i.e. which options are not enabled by default)?

A) Data encryption between Splunk Web and splunkd.
B) Certificate authentication between forwarders and indexers.
C) Certificate authentication between Splunk Web and search head.
D) Data encryption for distributed search between search heads and indexers.

Question 8

What does the deployer do in a Search Head Cluster (SHC)? (Select all that apply.)

A) Distributes apps to SHC members.
B) Bootstraps a clean Splunk install for a SHC.
C) Distributes non-search related and manual configuration file changes.
D) Distributes runtime knowledge object changes made by users across the SHC.

Question 9

Which CLI command converts a Splunk instance to a license slave?

A) splunk add licenses
B) splunk list licenser-slaves
C) splunk edit licenser-localslave
D) splunk list licenser-localslave

Question 10

A Splunk architect has inherited the Splunk deployment at Buttercup Games and end users are complaining that the events are inconsistently formatted for a web sourcetype. Further investigation reveals that not all web logs flow through the same infrastructure: some of the data goes through heavy forwarders and some of the forwarders are managed by another department. Which of the following items might be the cause for this issue?

A) The search head may have different configurations than the indexers.
B) The data inputs are not properly configured across all the forwarders.
C) The indexers may have different configurations than the heavy forwarders.
D) The forwarders managed by the other department are an older version than the rest.

Question 11

Which of the following clarification steps should be taken if apps are not appearing on a deployment client? (Select all that apply.)

A) Check serverclass.conf of the deployment server. Check serverclass.conf of the deployment server.
B) Check deploymentclient.conf of the deployment client. deploymentclient.conf of the deployment client.
C) Check the content of SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps of the deployment server. Check the content of SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps
D) Search for relevant events in splunkd.log of the deployment server. Search for relevant events in splunkd.log

Question 12

Which component in the splunkd.log will log information related to bad event breaking?

A) Audittrail
B) EventBreaking
C) IndexingPipeline
D) AggregatorMiningProcessor

Question 13

Which index-time props.conf attributes impact indexing performance? (Select all that apply.)

A) REPORT
B) LINE_BREAKER
C) ANNOTATE_PUNCT
D) SHOULD_LINEMERGE

Question 14

When using the props.conf LINE_BREAKER attribute to delimit multi-line events, the SHOULD_LINEMERGE attribute should be set to what?

A) Auto
B) None
C) true
D) false

Question 15

Which of the following is a good practice for a search head cluster deployer?

A) The deployer only distributes configurations to search head cluster members when they "phone home".
B) The deployer must be used to distribute non-replicable configurations to search head cluster members.
C) The deployer must distribute configurations to search head cluster members to be valid configurations.
D) The deployer only distributes configurations to search head cluster members with splunk apply shcluster-bundle . The deployer only distributes configurations to search head cluster members with splunk apply shcluster-bundle .

Question 16

Which command will permanently decommission a peer node operating in an indexer cluster?

A) splunk stop -f
B) splunk offline -f
C) splunk offline --enforce-counts
D) splunk decommission --enforce counts

Question 17

Which of the following is true regarding Splunk Enterprise performance? (Select all that apply.)

A) Adding search peers increases the maximum size of search results.
B) Adding RAM to an existing search heads provides additional search capacity.
C) Adding search peers increases the search throughput as search load increases.
D) Adding search heads provides additional CPU cores to run more concurrent searches.

Question 18

What is the minimum reference server specification for a Splunk indexer?

A) 12 CPU cores, 12GB RAM, 800 IOPS
B) 16 CPU cores, 16GB RAM, 800 IOPS
C) 24 CPU cores, 16GB RAM, 1200 IOPS
D) 28 CPU cores, 32GB RAM, 1200 IOPS

Question 19

In a four site indexer cluster, which configuration stores two searchable copies at the origin site, one searchable copy at site2, and a total of four searchable copies?

A) site_search_factor = origin:2, site1:2, total:4
B) site_search_factor = origin:2, site2:1, total:4
C) site_replication_factor = origin:2, site1:2, total:4
D) site_replication_factor = origin:2, site2:1, total:4

Question 20

A customer plans to ingest 600 GB of data per day into Splunk. They will have six concurrent users, and they also want high data availability and high search performance. The customer is concerned about cost and wants to spend the minimum amount on the hardware for Splunk. How many indexers are recommended for this deployment?

A) Two indexers not in a cluster, assuming users run many long searches.
B) Three indexers not in a cluster, assuming a long data retention period.
C) Two indexers clustered, assuming high availability is the greatest priority.
D) Two indexers clustered, assuming a high volume of saved/scheduled searches.

Question 21

In which phase of the Splunk Enterprise data pipeline are indexed extraction configurations processed?

A) Input
B) Search
C) Parsing
D) Indexing

Question 22

A Splunk instance has the following settings in SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/server.conf: [clustering] mode = master replication_factor = 2 pass4SymmKey = password123 Which of the following statements describe this Splunk instance? (Select all that apply.)

A) This is a multi-site cluster.
B) This cluster's search factor is 2.
C) This Splunk instance needs to be restarted.
D) This instance is missing the master_uri attribute. This instance is missing the master_uri attribute.

Question 23

Which command is used for thawing the archive bucket?

A) Splunk collect
B) Splunk convert
C) Splunk rebuild
D) Splunk dbinspect

Question 24

In search head clustering, which of the following methods can you use to transfer captaincy to a different member? (Select all that apply.)

A) Use the Monitoring Console.
B) Use the Search Head Clustering settings menu from Splunk Web on any member.
C) Run the splunk transfer shcluster-captain command from the current captain. Run the splunk transfer shcluster-captain command from the current captain.
D) Run the splunk transfer shcluster-captain command from the member you would like to become the captain. command from the member you would like to become the captain.

Question 25

When Splunk indexes data in a non clustered environment, what kind of files does it create by default?

A) Index and .tsidx files.
B) Rawdata and index files.
C) Compressed and .tsidx files.
D) Compressed and meta data files.

Question 26

What is the algorithm used to determine captaincy in a Splunk search head cluster?

A) Raft distributed consensus.
B) Rapt distributed consensus.
C) Rift distributed consensus.
D) Round-robin distribution consensus.

Question 27

When converting from a single-site to a multi-site cluster, what happens to existing single-site clustered buckets?

A) They will continue to replicate within the origin site and age out based on existing policies.
B) They will maintain replication as required according to the single-site policies, but never age out.
C) They will be replicated across all peers in the multi-site cluster and age out based on existing policies.
D) They will stop replicating within the single-site and remain on the indexer they reside on and age out according to existing policies.

Question 28

Which of the following describe migration from single-site to multisite index replication?

A) A master node is required at each site.
B) Multisite policies apply to new data only.
C) Single-site buckets instantly receive the multisite policies.
D) Multisite total values should not exceed any single-site factors.

Question 29

Which of the following is a way to exclude search artifacts when creating a diag ?

A) SPLUNK_HOME/bin/splunk diag --exclude
B) SPLUNK_HOME/bin/splunk diag --debug --refresh
C) SPLUNK_HOME/bin/splunk diag --disable=dispatch
D) SPLUNK_HOME/bin/splunk diag --filter-searchstrings

Question 30

Which of the following is a best practice to maximize indexing performance?

A) Use automatic sourcetyping.
B) Use the Splunk default settings.
C) Not use pre-trained source types.
D) Minimize configuration generality.

Question 31

Which server.conf attribute should be added to the master node's file when decommissioning a site in an indexer cluster?

A) site_mappings
B) available_sites
C) site_search_factor
D) site_replication_factor

Question 32

Which search head cluster component is responsible for pushing knowledge bundles to search peers, replicating configuration changes to search head cluster members, and scheduling jobs across the search head cluster?

A) Master
B) Captain
C) Deployer
D) Deployment server

Question 33

Configurations from the deployer are merged into which location on the search head cluster member?

A) SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local
B) SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/APP_HOME/local
C) SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/search/default
D) SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/APP_HOME/default

Question 34

Which of the following should be done when installing Enterprise Security on a Search Head Cluster? (Select all that apply.)

A) Install Enterprise Security on the deployer.
B) Install Enterprise Security on a staging instance.
C) Copy the Enterprise Security configurations to the deployer.
D) Use the deployer to deploy Enterprise Security to the cluster members.

Question 35

Of the following types of files within an index bucket, which file type may consume the most disk?

A) Rawdata
B) Bloom filter
C) Metadata (.data)
D) Inverted index (.tsidx)

Question 36

When troubleshooting monitor inputs, which command checks the status of the tailed files?

A) splunk cmd btool inputs list | tail
B) splunk cmd btool check inputs layer
C) curl https://serverhost:8089/services/admin/inputstatus/TailingProcessor:FileStatus
D) curl https://serverhost:8089/services/admin/inputstatus/TailingProcessor:Tailstatus

Question 37

The KV store forms its own cluster within a SHC. What is the maximum number of SHC members KV store will form?

A) 25
B) 50
C) 100
D) Unlimited

Question 38

When adding or decommissioning a member from a Search Head Cluster (SHC), what is the proper order of operations?

A) 1. Delete Splunk Enterprise, if it exists. 2. Install and initialize the instance. 3. Join the SHC.
B) 1. Install and initialize the instance. 2. Delete Splunk Enterprise, if it exists.
C) 1. Initialize cluster rebalance operation. 2. Remove master node from cluster. 3. Trigger replication.
D) 1. Trigger replication. 3. Initialize cluster rebalance operation.

Question 39

When planning a search head cluster, which of the following is true?

A) All search heads must use the same operating system.
B) All search heads must be members of the cluster (no standalone search heads).
C) The search head captain must be assigned to the largest search head in the cluster.
D) All indexers must belong to the underlying indexer cluster (no standalone indexers).

Question 40

Which Splunk internal index contains license-related events?

A) _audit
B) _license
C) _internal
D) _introspection

Question 41

Because Splunk indexing is read/write intensive, it is important to select the appropriate disk storage solution for each deployment. Which of the following statements is accurate about disk storage?

A) High performance SAN should never be used.
B) Enable NFS for storing hot and warm buckets.
C) The recommended RAID setup is RAID 10 (1 + 0).
D) Virtualized environments are usually preferred over bare metal for Splunk indexers.

Question 42

To reduce the captain's work load in a search head cluster, what setting will prevent scheduled searches from running on the captain?

A) adhoc_searchhead = true (on all members) adhoc_searchhead = true (on all members)
B) adhoc_searchhead = true (on the current captain) (on the current captain)
C) captain_is_adhoc_searchhead = true (on all members) captain_is_adhoc_searchhead = true
D) captain_is_adhoc_searchhead = true (on the current captain)

Question 43

Consider a use case involving firewall data. There is no Splunk-supported Technical Add-On, but the vendor has built one. What are the items that must be evaluated before installing the add-on? (Select all that apply.)

A) Identify number of scheduled or real-time searches.
B) Validate if this Technical Add-On enables event data for a data model.
C) Identify the maximum number of forwarders Technical Add-On can support.
D) Verify if Technical Add-On needs to be installed onto both a search head or indexer.

Question 44

The frequency in which a deployment client contacts the deployment server is controlled by what?

A) polling_interval attribute in outputs.conf polling_interval attribute in outputs.conf
B) p honeHomeIntervalInSecs attribute in outputs.conf p honeHomeIntervalInSecs
C) polling_interval attribute in deploymentclient.conf deploymentclient.conf
D) phoneHomeIntervalInSecs attribute in deploymentclient.conf phoneHomeIntervalInSecs

Question 45

Which of the following should be included in a deployment plan?

A) Business continuity and disaster recovery plans.
B) Current logging details and data source inventory.
C) Current and future topology diagrams of the IT environment.
D) A comprehensive list of stakeholders, either direct or indirect.

Question 46

Which of the following are client filters available in serverclass.conf ? (Select all that apply.)

A) DNS name.
B) IP address.
C) Splunk server role.
D) Platform (machine type).

Question 47

Which of the following can a Splunk diag contain?

A) Search history, Splunk users and their roles, running processes, indexed data
B) Server specs, current open connections, internal Splunk log files, index listings
C) KV store listings, internal Splunk log files, search peer bundles listings, indexed data
D) Splunk platform configuration details, Splunk users and their roles, current open connections, index listings

Question 48

When Splunk is installed, where are the internal indexes stored by default?

A) SPLUNK_HOME/bin
B) SPLUNK_HOME/var/lib
C) SPLUNK_HOME/var/run
D) SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default

Question 49

What is the logical first step when starting a deployment plan?

A) Inventory the currently deployed logging infrastructure.
B) Determine what apps and use cases will be implemented.
C) Gather statistics on the expected adoption of Splunk for sizing.
D) Collect the initial requirements for the deployment from all stakeholders.

Question 50

Which Splunk Enterprise offering has its own license?

A) Splunk Cloud Forwarder
B) Splunk Heavy Forwarder
C) Splunk Universal Forwarder
D) Splunk Forwarder Management

Question 51

Which two sections can be expanded using the Search Job Inspector?

A) Execution costs.
B) Saved search history.
C) Search job properties.
D) Optimization suggestions.

Question 52

Which of the following will cause the greatest reduction in disk size requirements for a cluster of N indexers running Splunk Enterprise Security?

A) Setting the cluster search factor to N-1.
B) Increasing the number of buckets per index.
C) Decreasing the data model acceleration range.
D) Setting the cluster replication factor to N-1.

Question 53

Which of the following statements describe search head clustering? (Select all that apply.)

A) A deployer is required.
B) At least three search heads are needed.
C) Search heads must meet the high-performance reference server requirements.
D) The deployer must have sufficient CPU and network resources to process service requests and push configurations.

Question 54

What log file would you search to verify if you suspect there is a problem interpreting a regular expression in a monitor stanza?

A) btool.log
B) metrics.log
C) splunkd.log
D) tailing_processor.log

Question 55

Which of the following options can improve reliability of syslog delivery to Splunk? (Select all that apply.)

A) Use TCP syslog.
B) Configure UDP inputs on each Splunk indexer to receive data directly.
C) Use a network load balancer to direct syslog traffic to active backend syslog listeners.
D) Use one or more syslog servers to persist data with a Universal Forwarder to send the data to Splunk indexers.

Question 56

Which of the following are true statements about Splunk indexer clustering?

A) All peer nodes must run exactly the same Splunk version.
B) The master node must run the same or a later Splunk version than search heads.
C) The peer nodes must run the same or a later Splunk version than the master node.
D) The search head must run the same or a later Splunk version than the peer nodes.

Question 57

Which of the following tasks should the architect perform when building a deployment plan? (Select all that apply.)

A) Use case checklist.
B) Install Splunk apps.
C) Inventory data sources.
D) Review network topology.

Question 58

Which of the following artifacts are included in a Splunk diag file? (Select all that apply.)

A) OS settings.
B) Internal logs.
C) Customer data.
D) Configuration files.

Question 59

A Splunk user successfully extracted an ip address into a field called src_ip . Their colleague cannot see that field in their search results with events known to have . Which of the following may explain the problem? (Select all that apply.)

A) The field was extracted as a private knowledge object.
B) The events are tagged as communicate, but are missing the network tag.
C) The Typing Queue, which does regular expression replacements, is blocked.
D) The colleague did not explicitly use the field in the search and the search was set to Fast Mode.

Question 60

A three-node search head cluster is skipping a large number of searches across time. What should be done to increase scheduled search capacity on the search head cluster?

A) Create a job server on the cluster.
B) Add another search head to the cluster.
C) server.conf captain_is_adhoc_searchhead = true . server.conf captain_is_adhoc_searchhead = true .
D) Change limits.conf value for max_searches_per_cpu to a higher value. Change limits.conf value for max_searches_per_cpu to a higher value.

Question 61

Which tool(s) can be leveraged to diagnose connection problems between an indexer and forwarder? (Select all that apply.)

A) telnet
B) tcpdump
C) splunk btool
D) splunk btprobe

Question 62

What is a Splunk Job? (Select all that apply.)

A) A user-defined Splunk capability.
B) Searches that are subjected to some usage quota.
C) A search process kicked off via a report or an alert.
D) A child OS process manifested from the splunkd process.

Question 63

Which of the following statements describe a Search Head Cluster (SHC) captain? (Select all that apply.)

A) Is the job scheduler for the entire SHC.
B) Manages alert action suppressions (throttling).
C) Synchronizes the member list with the KV store primary.
D) Replicates the SHC's knowledge bundle to the search peers.

Question 64

To optimize the distribution of primary buckets; when does primary rebalancing automatically occur? (Select all that apply.)

A) Rolling restart completes.
B) Master node rejoins the cluster.
C) Captain joins or rejoins cluster.
D) A peer node joins or rejoins the cluster.

Question 65

In a distributed environment, knowledge object bundles are replicated from the search head to which location on the search peer(s)?

A) SPLUNK_HOME/var/lib/searchpeers
B) SPLUNK_HOME/var/log/searchpeers
C) SPLUNK_HOME/var/run/searchpeers
D) SPLUNK_HOME/var/spool/searchpeers

Question 66

Splunk Enterprise platform instrumentation refers to data that the Splunk Enterprise deployment logs in the _introspection index. Which of the following logs are included in this index? (Select all that apply.)

A) audit.log
B) metrics.log
C) disk_objects.log
D) resource_usage.log

Question 67

Indexing is slow and real-time search results are delayed in a Splunk environment with two indexers and one search head. There is ample CPU and memory available on the indexers. Which of the following is most likely to improve indexing performance?

A) Increase the maximum number of hot buckets in indexes.conf Increase the maximum number of hot buckets in indexes.conf
B) Increase the number of parallel ingestion pipelines in server.conf Increase the number of parallel ingestion pipelines in server.conf
C) Decrease the maximum size of the search pipelines in limits.conf Decrease the maximum size of the search pipelines in limits.conf
D) Decrease the maximum concurrent scheduled searches in limits.conf Decrease the maximum concurrent scheduled searches in

Question 68

Which of the following statements about integrating with third-party systems is true? (Select all that apply.)

A) A Hadoop application can search data in Splunk.
B) Splunk can search data in the Hadoop File System (HDFS).
C) You can use Splunk alerts to provision actions on a third-party system.
D) You can forward data from Splunk forwarder to a third-party system without indexing it first.

Question 69

Search dashboards in the Monitoring Console indicate that the distributed deployment is approaching its capacity. Which of the following options will provide the most search performance improvement?

A) Replace the indexer storage to solid state drives (SSD).
B) Add more search heads and redistribute users based on the search type.
C) Look for slow searches and reschedule them to run during an off-peak time.
D) Add more search peers and make sure forwarders distribute data evenly across all indexers.

Question 70

Which of the following commands is used to clear the KV store?

A) splunk clean kvstore
B) splunk clear kvstore
C) splunk delete kvstore
D) splunk reinitialize kvstore

Question 71

How does the average run time of all searches relate to the available CPU cores on the indexers?

A) Average run time is independent of the number of CPU cores on the indexers.
B) Average run time decreases as the number of CPU cores on the indexers decreases.
C) Average run time increases as the number of CPU cores on the indexers decreases.
D) Average run time increases as the number of CPU cores on the indexers increases.

Question 72

Which search will show all deployment client messages from the client (UF)?

A) index=_audit component=DC* host= | stats count by message
B) index=_audit component=DC* host= | stats count by message
C) index=_internal component= DC* host= | stats count by message
D) index=_internal component=DS* host= | stats count by message

Question 73

When should multiple search pipelines be enabled?

A) Only if disk IOPS is at 800 or better.
B) Only if there are fewer than twelve concurrent users.
C) Only if running Splunk Enterprise version 6.6 or later.
D) Only if CPU and memory resources are significantly under-utilized.

Question 74

In an existing Splunk environment, the new index buckets that are created each day are about half the size of the incoming data. Within each bucket, about 30% of the space is used for rawdata and about 70% for index files. What additional information is needed to calculate the daily disk consumption, per indexer, if indexer clustering is implemented?

A) Total daily indexing volume, number of peer nodes, and number of accelerated searches.
B) Total daily indexing volume, number of peer nodes, replication factor, and search factor.
C) Total daily indexing volume, replication factor, search factor, and number of search heads.
D) Replication factor, search factor, number of accelerated searches, and total disk size across cluster.

Question 75

In the deployment planning process, when should a person identify who gets to see network data?

A) Deployment schedule
B) Topology diagramming
C) Data source inventory
D) Data policy definition

Question 76

How does IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) impact the planning of a Splunk deployment?

A) ITSI requires a dedicated deployment server.
B) The amount of users using ITSI will not impact performance.
C) ITSI in a Splunk deployment does not require additional hardware resources.
D) Depending on the Key Performance Indicators that are being tracked, additional infrastructure may be needed.

Question 77

Before users can use a KV store, an admin must create a collection. Where is a collection is defined?

A) kvstore.conf
B) collection.conf
C) collections.conf
D) kvcollections.conf

Question 78

Which Splunk tool offers a health check for administrators to evaluate the health of their Splunk deployment?

A) btool
B) DiagGen
C) SPL Clinic
D) Monitoring Console

Question 79

A search head has successfully joined a single site indexer cluster. Which command is used to configure the same search head to join another indexer cluster?

A) splunk add cluster-config
B) splunk add cluster-master
C) splunk edit cluster-config
D) splunk edit cluster-master

Question 80

What does setting site=site0 on all Search Head Cluster members do in a multi-site indexer cluster?

A) Disables search site affinity.
B) Sets all members to dynamic captaincy.
C) Enables multisite search artifact replication.
D) Enables automatic search site affinity discovery.