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Documentation: 3.0.2

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Getting Started
- About the getting started section
- Installation
- Start Splunk for the first time
- Administration Basics
- Change defaults
- Find and index data
- Add more users
- Start searching
How Splunk Works
- How Splunk Works
Configuring a Splunk Deployment
- Choose a Deployment Model
- Decide how Splunk should index your data
- Install Splunk on every host
- Configure the receiving servers
- Configure the forwarding servers
- Set up the deployment server
  - Configure the deployment server
  - Set up deployment classes
Data Inputs
- How input configuration works
  - Data input types
  - Indexing properties
- Configure inputs via SplunkWeb
- Configure inputs via the CLI
- Configure inputs via inputs.conf
  - Configuration
- Scripted inputs
  - Configuration
  - Example
- Add binary files
  - Configuration
  - Example
- File whitelisting / blacklisting
Hosts
- How host works
- Set default host for a Splunk server
  - via SplunkWeb
  - via configuration files
- Define host assignment for an input
  - Statically
  - Dynamically
- Tag hosts
  - via SplunkWeb
  - Host tags vs host names
- Extract host per event
  - Configuration
  - Example
- Host name configuration examples
  - Setting host through inputs.conf
  - Setting host through transforms.conf and props.conf
Source Types
- How source types work
- Set source type for an input
  - via SplunkWeb
  - via configuration files
- Set a source type for a source
  - via configuration files
- Train Splunk on a sourcetype
  - via the CLI
- Create an alias for a source type
  - via SplunkWeb
Timestamp Recognition
- How Splunk recognizes timestamps
  - Timestamp precedence
  - Configuration files for timestamps
- Configure Splunk to recognize a timestamp
- Train Splunk to recognize timestamps
  - About training
  - via the CLI
- How to configure timezone offsets
- Tune Timestamping
  - Turn off timestamp lookahead
Events
- How events work
- Large events
- Multiline events
  - Configuration
  - Examples
- Mask sensitive data in an event
  - Configuration
Event Types
- How event types work
- Configure auto-discovery
  - Configuration
  - Example
- punct::
- Save event types via SplunkWeb
  - Configuration
  - Example
- Configure eventtypes.conf
- Considerations for event types in distributed environments
Meta Events
- How meta events work
  - Transitive meta events
  - Configuration files for meta events
- Configure meta events
  - Configuration
  - Examples
Fields
- How fields work
- Create additional search fields
  - Configuration
  - Example
- Define additional extracted fields
  - Configuration
  - Example
- Field actions
  - Configuration
Segmentation
- How segmentation works
  - Configuration files for segmentation
- Configure segmentation
- Enable custom segmentation
  - Configuration
  - Example
Saved Searches and Alerts
- How saved searches work
  - Saved searches
  - Alerting
- Set up saved searches
  - via SplunkWeb
  - via configuration files
- Set up Alerts
- Send SNMP traps
  - Configuration
- Send syslog events
  - Configuration
  - Example
- Considerations for saved searches and alerts in a distributed environment
Authentication
- How authentication works
- SSL
  - Configuration
  - SSL for SplunkWeb
- Set up users
- Set up LDAP
Granular Access Control
- How Granular Access Control works
  - Configuration files for access controls
Data Distribution
- How data distribution works
- Enable forwarding and receiving
- Set up routing
  - Configuration
  - Examples
- Route data to third-party systems
  - Configuration
  - Example
- Enable cloning
- Set up SSL
  - Forwarder
  - Receiver
- Set up data balancing
  - Configuration
  - Example
- Filtering and routing
  - Configuration
  - Example
- Filter data before forwarding
- Route specific events to an alternate index
  - Configuration
  - Example
Distributed Search
- How distributed search works
  - Known issues with distributed search
- Enable distributed search via SplunkWeb
- Enable distributed search via the CLI
  - Configuration
- Configuration files for distributed search
- Users in a distributed search setup
- Exclude specific Splunk servers from distributed searches
Deployment Server
- How the deployment server works
  - Communication between deployment server and client
  - Configuration files for deployment server
- Configure a Splunk Deployment Server
- Configure deployment clients
  - Enable the client and server
  - Sync the server and client
- Configuration changes after initial deployment
- Using Splunk with 3rd Party configuration management systems
Index Management
- How Index Management Works
  - Data management
  - Configuration files for index management
- Disk usage
  - Set minimum free disk space
  - Set database size
- Set retirement policy
  - Remove files beyond a certain size
  - Remove files beyond a certain age
- Automate archiving
  - Use Splunk's index aging policy to archive
- Restoring archived data
  - Restoring a copied index archive
- Use separate partitions for Splunk's datastore
  - Set up separate partitions
- Use WORM (Write Once Read Many) volumes for Splunk's datastore
  - Set up a WORM datastore
- Reducing Index Density
- Delete data from the index
  - Delete everything
  - Delete a subset of events
Bundles
- What are Bundles?
- Bundle directory structure
- Bundle precedence
- Bundle best practice
  - Testing bundles
SplunkBase
- Why use SplunkBase?
- Sharing add-ons on SplunkBase
- Finding and downloading add-ons on SplunkBase
  - Implementing add-ons from SplunkBase
- Looking up events on SplunkBase
  - Configuration
- Security and privacy considerations
- Control user access to SplunkBase
Performance Tuning
- Indexing performance
- Search performance
- Storage efficiency
- Network utilization
- CPU and memory footprint
  - Improve CPU usage
  - Improve memory usage
- Multi-CPU servers
  - indexes.conf
- 64-bit operating systems
  - indexes.conf
- Virtual machines
Routine Maintenance
- System backups
  - Backups in 3 Easy Steps
- Monitoring Splunk
  - via SplunkWeb
How-To
- Make SplunkWeb search faster
  - Enable core fields only
  - Disable related
  - Disable typeahead
- Harden a Splunk server
- Secure network connections
- Restore a failed server
- Add or Remove an index
  - Create an index
  - Delete an index
- Move an index
  - Configuration
- Change data policy to recover space
- Anonymize data samples
  - Simple method
  - Advanced method
- Public server setup
- Determine daily volume
- Set up auto-refresh
- Upgrade your license for more data
- How to use Splunk 2 Nagios
  - What Nagios logs
  - Install the Splunk2Nagios integration
- Restore a blocked license
- Customize the built-in help module
- Configure GUI Timeout
- Configure the Get Started module
- Disable SplunkWeb
  - Edit web.conf
  - Run the disable command
  - Re-enable SplunkWeb
- Configure OPSEC LEA Input
  - Installation
  - Checkpoint Modification
  - Configuration
- Place Splunk behind a web proxy
  - Scenario:
  - Solution:
- Cancel Search
- Strip syslog headers before processing
- Reconstitute Logs
  - Export event data
  - CLI search
- Enable HTTPS
  - configuration
Troubleshooting
- Splunkd is down
- Splunk logfiles
- License issues
- Unable to get a properly formatted response from the server
- Contact Support
  - Work with Splunk Support
  - Log levels and starting in debug mode
Reference
- Splunk CLI
  - CLI commands
  - auth and uri parameters
  - Note for Mac users
- Pre-trained source types
  - Automatically recognized source types
  - Pre-trained source types
- Configuration file list
- access_controls.conf
  - access_controls.conf.spec
- alert_actions.conf
  - alert_actions.conf.spec
- auth.conf
  - auth.conf.spec
- deployment.conf
  - deployment.conf.spec
- eventdiscoverer.conf
  - eventdiscoverer.conf.spec
- eventtypes.conf
  - eventtypes.conf.spec contents
- field_actions.conf
  - field_actions.conf.spec
- indexes.conf
  - indexes.conf.spec
- inputs.conf
  - inputs.conf.spec
- metaevents.conf
  - metaevents.conf.spec
- outputs.conf
  - outputs.conf.spec
- prefs.conf
  - prefs.conf.spec
- props.conf
  - props.conf.spec
- savedsearches.conf
  - How to read a savedsearches.conf file
  - savedsearches.conf.spec
- segmenters.conf
  - segmenters.conf.spec
- server.conf
  - server.conf.spec
- transforms.conf
  - transforms.conf.spec
- user-seed.conf
  - user-seed.conf.spec
- web.conf
  - web.conf.spec

This page last updated: 12/21/07 11:12am

How distributed search works

You can configure Splunk servers to distribute searches across other Splunk servers and merge the results. Distributed search is a peer-to-peer configuration. At login, authentication attempts will be federated across all other servers. Users will only be able to search those Splunk servers where their credentials are accepted. Users can restrict any search to explicitly search only a subset of the servers.

All Splunk servers in a distributed search configuration must have Enterprise licenses.

Distributed search is typically used:

To enable correlation among multiple separate logical silos of data for a subset of users with greater privilege
To provide a single view of data that has been distributed across multiple indexing servers for clustered scaling
To provide a single view across Splunk servers that are indexing data locally on production hosts, where network bandwidth favors centralizing data at search time rather than index time

Note: Because distributed search uses the management port (default 8089), you must configure SSL either off or on for all servers. The default is to enable SSL on the management port. If you turn it off for one server, you must turn it off for all servers.

Known issues with distributed search

Currently, event types and saved searches are not federated across distributed search servers. As a result, if you are searching for eventtype::foo or savedsearch::bar, server1 will return anything that matches the search. Any other server in the distributed search will not return unless eventtype::foo or savedsearch::bar are also defined on those servers.

Previous: Route specific events to an alternate index | Next: Enable distributed search via SplunkWeb

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