Splunk Admin Interview Questions

If you're looking for Splunk Administration Interview Questions for Experienced or Freshers, you are at right place. There are a lot of opportunities from many reputed companies in the world. According to research Splunk Administration has a market share of about 36.2%. So, You still have the opportunity to move ahead in your career as a Splunk Administration Analyst. Mindmajix offers Advanced Splunk Administration Interview Questions 2023 that helps you in cracking your interview & acquire your dream career as a Splunk Administration Developer.

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Frequently Asked Splunk Admin Interview Questions

1. What is Splunk Administration?
2. How to configure Splunk?
3. What do you mean by license violation in Splunk?
4. How do you explain the working of Splunk?
5. Explain components of Splunk architecture?
6. How does License Master help in Splunk?
7. What do you understand by the Splunk app?

Splunk Admin Interview Questions and Answers

1. What is Splunk Administration?

Splunk is mainly used to make machine data reachable, utilizable & helpful to everyone. It also helps to examine the massive volume of machine data that is produced by technology infrastructure & IT systems in virtual, physical & the cloud.

2. How does Splunk help the Organization?

Most corporations are investing in this technology as it helps to examine their end-to-end infrastructures, shun service outages & gain real-time critical insights into client experience, key business metrics & transactions.

3. What are the pre-requisites required to take Splunk Administration training?

To take Splunk Administration training, there are no particular prerequisites but the desired aspirants who are having subject knowledge skills in system administration, Linux, windows, etc will be added advantage.

4. Who can take Splunk Administration training in the reputed institutions?

Desired aspirants who are aspiring to become Splunk Administration expertise in the current IT world can take up this course. IT Employees, Information Security Professionals, Business Analytics professionals, Splunk beginners, Big Data technology expertise can take the course to have a bright career future.

5. What is Splunk free?

Splunk Free is completely a free version of Splunk. It is a free license that will never expire & will allow you to index with 500 MB per day. If the users required more amount of data, then one can purchase an Enterprise license.

6. How to configure Splunk?

Behind the working of Splunk, the Splunk configuration files are the main brains where it controls the entire behavior of Splunk. All the respective files are saved with .conf extension & with the appropriate access, one can easily edit or read as well.

7. What are the components of a Splunk Enterprise deployment?

Here are the components of Splunk enterprise deployment that is Indexer, Search head, Forwarder, Deployment server, Functions at a glance, Indexer replication & indexer cluster.

8. How is a career path in Splunk Administration?

Splunk's Administration career is extremely lucrative where the experts are getting the highest paid salary range when compared to other technologies. The various job roles in the Splunk careers are high such as system engineers, Software engineers, programming analysts, security engineers, solutions architects & technical services managers.

Checkout Splunk Interview Questions that help you grab high-paying jobs!

9. Why choose Splunk when compared to other open-source options?

Splunk administration is facing tough competition in the terms of data analysis, enhancing business intelligence & also provides security & managing IT operation.

10. What do you mean by license violation in Splunk?

A license violation is a simple term word that will be occurred when the data limit exceeds. There will at least 5 warnings for the commercial licensing & the free version has 3 warnings.

(OR)

This situation takes place when the data limit within the platform exceeds. When you are using commercially licensed software, it generates 5 alerts in the platform. In case you are using a free version of the software, it regenerates only three alerts. 

11. What will you do in case License Master is unreachable?

In case the license master is unreachable, it is just not possible to search for the lost data within the platform. Though the data coming into the indexer would not be affected, and it would continue to move into the Splunk deployment server. In addition, the indexer will continue to index the data. The only change that you will notice is an alert message on the search head alerting that the number of index volumes has been exceeded. To tackle the situation, you have to either check the volume of data flowing or get a higher capacity of license. The indexing never stops when only the search function terminations.

(OR)

If the license master is unreachable then there is no possibility to search the data. However, there will not be any effect & it will have a continuous flow of the Splunk deployment & the indexing will continue the index. Moreover, there will also be a warning message when the indexing volume will get exceed.

12. Why is Splunk administration used for the analysis of machine data?

Splunk administration is considered a great tool that will allow the visibility of data that will be generated from machines such as hardware devices, IoT devices, servers, and other sources. As it helps to provide crucial insights into IT operations, it is used for analyzing the machine data with ease.

13. How do you explain the working of Splunk?

The working of the Splunk administration is based on the three components mainly are forwarded, indexer & search head.

14. What is the main function of the 3 components?

The main function of the forwarder is to collect the data from various sources & then it will send to the indexers. Then indexer will store the received data in the cloud or in the host machine for future use. Search Head components usually perform many functions such as searching, indexing, visualizing the data.

15. What is the use of a deployment server in Splunk administration?

The deployment server usage is more efficient which probably controls the host-independent connotations, path naming conventions, machine naming conventions from a central location.

→ Explore Splunk API Overview

16. Does Splunk administration support user authentication systems?

The Splunk administration will support the various authentication systems such as Splunk internal authentication with role-based user access, LDAP, A scripted authentication API for use with an external authentication system like PAM or RADIUS, Multifactor authentication & Single Sign-on.

17. How to discover or modify the current LDAP configurations?

Follow certain steps to discover or modify the current LDAP configurations: Click the access control button under the users & authentication. Then click LDAP & then from the respective page, one can easily control specific strategies, can also view the information & also track the LDAP mappings to the Splunk roles.

18. What is Splunk cloud administration?

Here, mostly all the tasks will be handled by the Splunk cloud administrator to use the data in an efficient manner.

(OR)

In order to use all data effectively, all necessary tasks are supposed to be handled by this cloud administration. 

19. How to install & upgrade Splunk enterprise?

First, the planning of the installation process should be efficient & confidential. Then later, estimate your hardware requirements. The third step is to install the Splunk enterprise on Windows, Unix, Linux or MoS, etc & it can also be upgraded to the earlier version if it is required.

(OR)

The installation of Splunk enterprise should be a confidential one and for the same, you need to check the hardware requirement such that the platform can be implemented easily. After checking, you can install the enterprise on operating systems such as Windows, Linux, MoS, and others. In addition, you can also upgrade the enterprise when needed from time to time.

20. What do you understand by Splunk Administration? What is the latest version of the tool Splunk?

Splunk can be regarded as a platform that makes data accessible to users. You can have easy visibility of data generated from hardware devices, networks, servers, and other sources. The Splunk administration helps to analyze plenty of data that is used in various plenty of IT operations, security, threat, and for detecting any fraud cases. Splunk is a vital tool that is used in businesses for data analytics.

The latest version of the tool is Splunk 6.3.

21. Explain components of Splunk architecture?

There are four components of this architecture namely –

1. Indexer – It helps to index machine data
2. Forwarder – It helps forward logs to an indexer
3. Search Head – It provides a GUI or graphical user interface for searching while using this tool.
4. Deployment server – It helps to manage the tool components in a distributed environment

22. How does this platform work?

This platform works with three components as mentioned above where the forwarder assembles data from various sources and forwards it to the indexer. Thereafter, the indexer holds the data for some time in its host storage or machine that acts like cloud storage.

Then, the search head can be used for various purposes such as analyzing, visualizing, and searching the data that is stored in the indexer.

In the case of a larger platform, the fourth component is also involved such as Deployment Server. All these components help to act as an antivirus server providing help to the platform for which it is used. These components help to convert the collected data into results that help to solve the posted query. The final information is displayed via a chart or report that is understandable by the mass.

23. How many types of Splunk forwarders are there?

The Splunk forwarder is of two types, and they are namely – 

1. Heavy Forwarders – It actually works as an intermediate forwarder that analyzes the data before it is sent to the indexer.
2. Universal Forwarders – It also helps to process any data before it is forwarded to the indexer.

24. Do you have any idea about how many types of Splunk licenses are there?

There are mainly six types of licenses pertaining to this platform. They are as follows –

1. Free license
2. Beta license
3. Enterprise license
4. Forwarder license
5. Licenses for cluster members
6. Licenses for search heads

25. How this platform helps business organizations? Is it possible to use anything open source?

In these days of advanced technology, most organizations are investing in using this platform that aids to analyze end-to-end infrastructure and data. In addition, it also helps in various transactions in the business organization. The platform is used for various IT operations and providing adequate security. In this regard, this Splunk is one of the best software that helps in carrying out all operations.

With the help of this platform, you are able to enhance the infrastructure and provide a good backup for the organization. This platform stands out as the best one when compared to any other open-source software that is able to manage all functions efficiently. The open-source services require plugins for supporting customer support and also to carry out any data input function.

To consider some of its competitors, Sumo Logic is another platform and ELK is another one that can be considered as open-source software.

→ Explore the Latest Article on Splunk Careers

26. Can you explain what alerts are available in Splunk?

Alerts are action in this platform that is generated by any saved search results shown from time to time. As soon as the alerts are shown, other subsequent actions start to occur. For example, it can send an email when an alert is triggered suddenly. The alerts are mainly of three types and they are as follows –

1. Pre-result alerts – It is a common type of alert that runs most of the time. The alert is set in such a way that whenever a result comes out for any search, the alerts are triggered.
2. Rolling-window alerts – These types are hybrid alerts that are shown on real-time search and do not come up with every search result that the platform shows. All the events are well examined within the rolling window and give out a specific time in which the required event is met by the window.
3. Scheduled alerts – This is the third category of alerts that mainly functions to assess the history of search results over a given span of time. In this case, you can set the time span, schedule, and trigger the condition as an alert.

27. What are the types of common port numbers that are allotted to this platform?

The common port numbers function depending on the service on which this platform functions. These are –

• Splunk Management Port – 8089
• Splunk Web Port – 8000
• Splunk Indexing Port – 9997
• Splunk network port - 514

28. Draw a comparison between Splunk and spark?

Considering the deployment area, Splunk help to collect data that is generated by the machine and make it accessible to a larger audience. It is a proprietary kind of tool that works in streaming mode.

On the contrary, spark helps in-memory applications. It is basically an open-source software that works both in streaming and batch mode.

29. State some advantages of analyzing data into Splunk via forwarders.

Some of the benefits of using this platform are TCP connection, proper bandwidth, and protected SSL connection when trying to transfer data from a forwarder to an indexer. After this, in case the indexer is found functioning slowly due to network issues, the data can be forwarded to another index within a short time. In addition to this, the forwarder takes into account the events before forwarding them in order to get a backup of the data.

30. How does License Master help in Splunk?

This license in the platform is responsible for assuring that the right amount of data is forwarded to the index. The license functions according to the amount of data flow into it within 24 hours. It further helps to ensure that the environment of the platform stays within the limit of the volume of data that it receives.

31. If you wish to use a free version of Splunk, which features are lacking?

The free version of the platforms lacks certain features such as

1. Authentication and scheduled searches
2. Distributed search
3. Deployment management of the platform
4. Forwarding of data into TCP or HTTP

32. How can you get an IP address from the logs while using this platform?

The regular expression can be used for extracting the same and the steps are mentioned below:

rex field=_raw  "(?d+.d+.d+.d+)"  

                              OR

rex field=_raw  "(?([0-9]{1,3}[.]){3}[0-9]{1,3})"

33. How can you solve any issues in this platform pertaining to its performance?

• Some of the probable processes are mentioned below that help figure out any performance issue:
• You can look for the Splunk log for the presence of any errors. In addition, you also have to check the quality of performance of the server such as memory usage, disk input, and output, etc.
• You can try to install Splunk on the Splunk application and look for the occurrence of any error present on the dashboard.
• Check for the number of saved search attempts and the limit of the system should be that it does not exceed the limit of search saved. In that case, it fails to provide the required alert to the platform.
• If using the Firefox browser, you can install Firebug into the browser extension. After installation, enable it and then try to log onto the above-mentioned platform and open firebug's panels. Then go to a Net panel that shows the detailing of HTTP and the responses that it has made.

34. Name some configuration files relating to the platform.

Some of the important files are as follows:

1. props.conf
2. indexes.conf
3. inputs.conf
4. transforms.conf
5. server.conf

35. What do you understand about the Splunk app?

It is an application that has lists of configuration, search results, dashboards, etc. that works within the above-mentioned platform. 

36. What steps to follow in case you forget the password of the platform?

To reset the password of the platform, you have to log in to the server o which the platform has been installed and after that try to rename the password file to a definite location mentioned further. After this, you need to restart the platform and then again try to login with the help of the default username then choose admin password and choose for ‘$splunk-homeetcpasswd’ location on the platform.

37. Can you delete the search history of the platform?

You, the search history can be cleared, and for the same, you will have to delete ‘$splunk_home/var/log/splunk/searches.log’ found on the server of Splunk.

38. How can you disable the launch message that pops up on the platform?

You need to set a value like ‘OFFENSIVE=Less in splunk_launch.conf’ on the platform to disable the message service.

39. Draw a difference between the Splunk app and the Splunk add-on?

A common factor between both the application and add-on is that it has preconfigured configuration. But the point of difference is that the latter one lacks a visual feature that is preconfigured in Splunk apps. 

40. What is the use of Splunk alert and what are the various options available while setting up the alert on the platform?

These alerts created within the platform helps to know about any erroneous conditions that might arise within the system. This situation comes up when after failed login attempts, a notification email is sent to the admin within a twenty-hour span.

The options available while setting an alert on the platform:

Certain options come up such that you are able to create webhook during creating the alerts. Using this chart, you are able to send any query and mentioning the same in the body of the email.
In addition, you also have the provision to add results, such as .csv o pdf file to the email body to make the recipient alert about the condition that should be taken care and the subsequent action that should be undertaken.

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