What is Reddit's opinion of
Splunk?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Chef: Chef is a solid automation tool that's geared toward people without a lot of programming background.
Splunk: Splunk is big data aggregation software...It's cool, but wait until someone pays for it before you try and use it. You can fix the same problems by setting up log rotation or using rsyslog and exporting your logs to a NAS or something.
Autofs is a base linux package these days. Pretty simple. Really reduces your headaches as opposed to just cramming stuff in the fstab.
Really the most valuable skill is laziness. Would you rather spend 1000 hours fixing the same problem over and over, or 10 hours fixing it for all eternity? Whenever you see the same problem twice, write it down, and start looking online to see how people solved it. Someone always knows how to solve it.
Did a little searching for Deep Packet Inspection + Raspberry Pi and found this. What you could do once you've built this thing out is set the router's DNS to the raspberry pi's fixed IP such as x.x.x.254 and have all traffic routed out I assume.
In addition, while you're doing all of that you might as well check out Pi-Hole.
I suspect you're working too hard, doing this by hand. Splunk is engineered from the ground up to parse and analyze this kind of data, particularly log files, and it's very, very good at it.
Not only that, they bought a license of Splunk to manage their internal servers. Their IT manager then pointed the Senior management to Splunk and used it as their sole focal point of their business model improvements.
This is how you know who is making your pizza, how long it took, who is delivering it and how much time until they ring your door bell.
For a few years they did that to improve practically every process involved. Now they are using it for supply chain management.
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/resources/video.B2cGVpbzpJSydRuv7roNb7HJsmwa0WZz.html
I don't know anything about this botnet or raspberry pi, but this article (https://www.splunk.com/blog/2016/10/07/analyzing-the-mirai-botnet-with-splunk.html) suggests that this botnet or something connected also targeted default raspberry pi accounts.
How did you lock your pi down?
As someone who just moved into the Splunk Consulting world, here's some things to know:
Most companies outsource their work to Splunk Professional Services firms. These are the guys you'll want to work for.
Working for a Splunk PS partner requires a Splunk Cert.
Splunk certs are not cheap - best to use someone else's money if you can.
Getting a cert can take three months, during which you won't necessarily be working, so have some runway.
If you go for an FTE job that requires Splunk skills, it will likely also require other Admin skills, including other Analytics tooling, and Linux administration.
They did more than just the careflight. After my dad died they basically gave us about $200k. $100K+ in stocks that would have been my Dad's but he didn't work enough during the year to earn them. They payed about 3 months of 60% of his salary. Paid my mother's health insurance for a year. And gave her a bunch of benefits that normally only go to their employees, like free therapist visits. They even donated to a charity in his name, we chose angelflight, who got my dad away from Vegas in the first place. They hook up hobby pilots with people who desperately need to be flown somewhere, and pay for medical equipment fuel ect. for the flight.
Really can't brag enough about his company. He worked there for only two years, and because of illness really was only present about 10 months, but they treated him like family and really took care of ours.
Hey brok3nwir3,
I’m a Splunk certified architect who just got the recert at .conf this year. It wasn’t until after the test that I found the “blueprints” that Splunk publishes to tell you what to study.
The master list of all blueprints
The specific Core Certified User PDF
The test format is typical Pearson: some multiple choice, some selecting all that apply, etc. The biggest takeaway I can give on the format is to use the flagging feature. Get all the answers you know, then double back to look at the items you’ve flagged as being unsure about.
Comparing your notes to the PDF, most items, about 75%, would be covered at some level by your prep. Try to know the specific commands they mention, the search UI and flow, and hopefully we’ll see you on the other side with a shiny new Cert!
Let me know if you have any other questions, and best of luck
To oversimplify: Search is designed to contact all instances, rather than locking a specific user to a set of instances, so while you could have multiple cloud instances, your Splunk Enterprise search head will still contact all of them when a user runs a search.
The right way to do multi-tennant is through role-based access, limiting users to specific indexes. You can use index-time transforms to route data into specific indexes for each client.
Keep in mind you'll also need an MSP license to run Splunk as an MSSP, which is different to a normal license (https://www.splunk.com/en_us/partners/become-a-partner/managed-service-provider-program.html)
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/courses/splunk-fundamentals-1.html
Start with that free course. Part of the work is setting up your own Splunk server, which will get you started.
You'll need to forward logs to the Splunk system via syslog or install a Splunk Forwarder on any systems you want to gather logs from.
Good luck!
There is a bank of questions that are made internally here at Splunk. Each question has a difficulty level from various sections of the exam.
That said, you'll get some questions you encountered before and other questions from the bank.
I don't think there is a method of only showing questions you got right, wrong or new - so completely random, but to keep the difficulty level the same for each section.
Hopefully that makes sense.
For Power User, I can say, study the hell out of the material and practice on a test Splunk system. We provide free 50GB/day Dev/Test Licenses here: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/resources/personalized-dev-test-licenses.html
What? There's barely anything on the admin exam that requires more than a cursory understanding of regex. OP do not obsess over regex, double-check your understanding of all the concepts that are listed in the blueprint for certified admin. Regex is a magical world that you could spend all your prep time studying and still fail the cert exam.
You don't want UBA. Instead, look at the machine learning toolkit and ITSI.
Depending on your situation, you might get a lot of value from an internship. Understanding Splunk is one thing but also understanding its use cases and demands in cyber security, IoT and other types of machine data is a huge part people often overlook. If you have zero experience in IT or Cyber Security I'd consider pairing your Splunk certification with another networking or security related certification.
Any entry level Splunk or AWS certification will likely get you a intern or jr. architect role in a lot of places. Consider the two lists below:
https://aws.amazon.com/certification/
Becoming a Certified Splunk User/Admin or AWS Cloud Practitioner are great first steps and are fairly cheap to attain. However, the further you down the certification path for Splunk the tests and training get considerably more expensive, it's best to find a company that will pay for you to advance your knowledge and pay for new certifications, ask about that in the interviews.
If you have other questions just let me know.
Splunk Fundamentals 1, my friend. It’s a video course (plus cert if you’re into that) that covers what Splunk is and teaches you all the basics.
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/courses/splunk-fundamentals-1.html
TCPDump or wireshark may be good, but if you want to look at the Splunk built solution for packet capture, Splunk Stream is a pretty good option Blog about setup
someone used this chart as a reference.
(slide 54)
Congrats! CBROPS or even a practical cert in SPLUNK may be fun and beneficial. To get the ball rolling for FREE on the SPLUNK training.
Some thoughts as a longtime Splunker:
> Most companies outsource their work to Splunk Professional Services firms
I would say "many", not most.
>These are the guys you'll want to work for.
Very good suggestion based on a few folks I've talked with who ~~couldn't~~ didn't get a job at Splunk proper. [Edit: that sounded bad.]
>Splunk certs are not cheap
But Splunk fundamentals 1 is free and is better than nothing. Also, splunk4good is soon to get the second fundamentals class added to their offering. So, anybody with an .edu email address can go that route. Or military, which we announced at .conf.
Ah, okay, so not everything is through an Agile process. 1 and 2 products make sense in an Agile environment. There's some more bandwidth there to work on more products if they aren't under Agile. Here's a great book to help you out: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/splunklife/the-product-is-docs.html
I'd use it as a reference point to your manager of how world-class documentation teams operate.
use the MC to check when searches are being ran. lots of times people schedule everything to run at the top of the hour instead of spreading them out
look into search skewing which could help with a bunch of searches being ran at once (https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/platform/schedule-windows-vs-skewing.html)
check how many searches are being ran at once. you should have one CPU core per search. might have to add more CPU cores
looks like all the skipped searches are data model acceleration. make sure you're restricting your data models to only the indexes with the data relevant to that data model
- Check audit logs if the search with the alert action has been performed correctly (success status) https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/conf-splunklive/splunk-internal-logs-alerting.html
- Check mail log on SMTP if there is any trace of mail send out action.
- Verify recipient mail server settings eg. with https://mxtoolbox.com
You’ll want to learn about Common Information Model (CIM), which is a specific application of data models (so you need to understand them as well. Everything in Enterprise Security (our SIEM product) must come in mapped to a CIM model or the dashboards and workflows won’t work.
Skim all the class outlines for the security track as well.
If you have an existing ticketing system you can usually poll the api. I do this with Jira.
Alternatively this is basically what ES does. It has correlations, alerts, incident tracking, and open, in progress, closed datasets. Just gotta pay for it. :)
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/software/enterprise-security.html
Certification tracks are on the left: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training.html. These certs look wonderful on a resume. I'm only a certified Power User but I get pinged by recruiters left and right for Splunk jobs all over the country.
Sorry to plug my own stuff, but have you looked at getwatchlist?
https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/635/
One blog on usage: https://www.splunk.com/blog/2011/08/16/getwatchlist-getting-watchlists-into-splunk-quickly-and-easily-with-a-splunk-custom-search-command.html
Another: https://www.google.com/amp/s/digirati82.com/2013/06/03/using-splunk-to-watch-for-new-binaries/amp/
There are more, but that should give you some ideas. HTH.
Every team I've worked with in the past 5 years uses this. It's not confined to specific applications or platforms and is completely searchable. Being able to instantly search all of your servers for specific events and get back an interactive report is worth its weight in gold. Creating log entries is dead simple.
They have a pretty generous trial program but I have no idea what the final cost would be.
From this week's partner email "Know Before You Go" link:
>"Splunk Certification wants to celebrate .conf21 Virtual with you! From October 15-25, use code braggingrightsIRL at checkout for a $50 certification exam with testing partner PearsonVUE — that's a 60% discount! Exam appointments are available through January 31, so you can register now and test when you're ready. Terms and conditions apply."
If you are up for some deep reading, check out the Splunk Validated Architecture, which is a <50 pg. doc that among other things, has a dedicated chapter on data collection techniques. Here’s the intro blog post: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/tips-and-tricks/splunk-validated-architectures.html
Read through the exam blueprint and study the PDFs. The sections in the test correspond to the chapters in the PDF.
https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/training/Splunk-Test-Blueprint-Power-User-v.1.1.pdf
Hello. The sys admin and data admin classes are recommended but are not required. (In case anyone writes in with old info, the requirements were dropped last year. See here).
What is required is the Power User Cert.
As you list, your study material should be the Blueprint, and then look up each topic.
Good luck!
Position: Various: Sales Engineers, Account Manager (Sales), Professional Services, Cloud Sales Specialist
Company: Splunk
Location: 1-1-1 大手町 Tokyo
Salary: Competitive
Perm or Contract(and contract length): Permanent
Description: Join us as we pursue our disruptive new vision to make machine data accessible, usable and valuable to everyone. We are a company filled with people who are passionate about our product and seek to deliver the best experience for our customers. At Splunk, we’re committed to our work, customers, having fun and most importantly to each other’s success.
Most of the sales and sales engineering positions require excellent communication skills (e.g., translating technical product to business value)
We value diversity at our company. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics in the location in which the candidate is applying.
Language(s) level: Fluent, Native level Japanese Communication
Contact info: DM me and check out our job listings for more detail.
There are lots of repositories out there. You're actually most looking for KML / KMZ files (which Splunk uses natively for geospatial lookups).
See also this old blog post: https://www.splunk.com/blog/2015/10/01/use-custom-polygons-in-your-choropleth-maps.html
Also this doc: https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.2.5/Knowledge/Configuregeospatiallookups
When I took Power User, all the answers were in the guide. Not much in my opinion I could do else where. Maybe have the Splunk document downloaded for the search reference and the quick reference. Good luck.
https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/solution-guides/splunk-quick-reference-guide.pdf
But more than anything else. Use the included document. All answers are in that. Good luck m8.
There are download pages for older releases of both splunk core and forwarders:
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/download/previous-releases.html
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/download/previous-releases/universalforwarder.html
You'll be fine, just study the slide deck and this study guide! I passed with the same content but a lot less hands on work. https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/training/Splunk-Certification-Exams-Study-Guide.pdf
If you want to use a load balancer in front of your indexers, you can do that for HEC (HTTP Event Collector) data collection. If you deploy on AWS, ELB (aka Classic Load Balancers) are preferred over the ALB’s.
Check out the Splunk Validated Architectures for more guidance : https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/technical-briefs/splunk-validated-architectures.pdf
Not Go specific but I'm aware of paid solutions that can achieve what you're asking, specifically NewRelic and Splunk; depending on what cloud provider you're using you can configure your programs to send the output of your structured log to them, either STDOUT or a sidecar agent running next to the process.
If you're using AWS it makes sense (for now? / because of budget concerns?) to dump the output as S3 files and search them using Athena when needed.
Cert doesn't handle Splunk University, but we will have a pop up testing center at .conf again this year.
​
You should be able to find the answers to all your cert/education questions here: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training.html
Taking fundamentals I and II gives you power user. Too my knowledge there is no power user exam itself.
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/certification-track/splunk-core-certified-power-user.html
Read through the test blueprint, it will tell you where the questions come from in the PDF. The sections listed in the blueprint correspond to the Chapters in the PDF. I've done well in the tests by reading through the PDF and focusing more on the sections with the higher weight and the sections that came me the most "trouble".
https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/training/Splunk-Test-Blueprint-Power-User-v.1.1.pdf
Splunk Core Certified Power User is a mandatory prerequisite to Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin.
All candidates must complete the Power User exam before proceeding.
Splunk Core Certified User is not a mandatory prerequisite to Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin.
Source: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/certification-track/splunk-enterprise-certified-admin.html
> Anyone that uses it or have taken a Splunk Cert can recommend which one is better for maybe a SOC analyst Or Cyber Analyst role?
Your question was specifically for an analyst perspective, that's not admin scope certificate territory.
The below is from Splunk's page. https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/certification-track/splunk-es-certified-admin/overview.html
> A Splunk Certified Enterprise Security Admin manages a Splunk Enterprise Security environment, including ES event processing and normalization, deployment requirements, technology add-ons, settings, risk analysis settings, threat intelligence and protocol intelligence configuration, and customizations. This certification demonstrates an individual's ability to install, configure, and manage a Splunk Enterprise Security deployment.
Look at all the prereqs Splunk suggests someone attempting the certification: all are administration. None of which is for a day to day user.
Sure if you want to expand knowledge of the internal workings of ES and admin role types of things knock your socks off, but since you said to only go for one, I'd focus on Power User. This is one area I think Splunk sucks (there are others) at with ES, there's no user course for ES which I think it needs to due to complexity and the internal workings of which can be confusing to an average user.
This is applicable. We also periodically have trainings at Fal.con and other events. If you want to super-charge your learning, and your organization is willing to invest in you, we have a catalog of trainings and certifications.
Hi there,
Yes - Golden SAML is a post-exploitation technique, not an infiltration technique. Post-explotation attacks can be highly useful too, like the Kerberos Golden Ticket for example (whereas Golden SAML is the SAML equivalent for it, thus it is named after it).
How attackers can gain admin access to ADFS in the first place? Usually the same as attackers get domain admin so often in corp networks. Initial infiltration using phishing or exploiting a vulnerable public facing interface (for example), lateral movement and privilege escalation using AD related techiques like pass-the-hash and many others.
This attack gained popularity lately because of its use as part of the SolarWinds attack, where a SolarWinds backdoor (aka Solorigate/Sunburst) was used to gain initial access to organizations and Golden SAML was later used for stealth user impersonation and persistence. Microsoft has published plenty of advisories on this matter.
You can't run a similar atrack by compromising a cloud IDP like Okta/Ping/AAD, because you can't steal their SAML token signing certificate. To impersonate another user in those IDPs, you would generally need to reset the user's password. But with Golden SAML (and Golden Ticket) you can impersonate any user without being intrusive, for a prolonged period.
The main added value of that advisory is basically what its headline says - exactly how to detect/hunt the attack, including the relevant event IDs. I haven't seen any other adviaory that does exactly that, except for a Splunk advisory that made a follow-up and has referenced it: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/security/a-golden-saml-journey-solarwinds-continued.html
Disclosure - I work at Sygnia, the company that published this article. Hope it helped :)
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/resources/splunk-enterprise-metered-license-enforcement-faq.html
> Starting with version 6.5, Splunk Enterprise will no longer disable search when you exceed your licensed data ingestion quota. This will be standard for any new license purchased on or after September 27, 2016. If you’re an existing customer, you will need to upgrade to Splunk Enterprise 6.5 and request a “no-enforcement” key from your Splunk sales rep or Splunk authorized partner.
Short answer is "yes". If you can configure TMDS to send the data to that location and port, Splunk can be configured to listen and ingest the logs.
Long answer is "Yes, but don't do that because it's a bad idea." If you configure Splunk to listen for incoming logs on port 514, then every time you deploy a new bundle or need to restart Splunk for any reason, you will drop logs.
The right answer is to stand up a syslog server to receive those logs and then forward them into Splunk for indexing and analysis.
If you're starting from scratch, check this out: https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/4740/
EDIT: Please also review Splunk Validated Architecture here: https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/technical-briefs/splunk-validated-architectures.pdf
Start near the bottom of page 31 to dive into syslog architecture.
Splunk's been around for at least 15 years and is currently on release 7.3. And has many major companies as customers. This is only a list of customers that are public, there's a much much larger list of companies that don't announce, though if you look at Splunk engineer openings at big companies, you can get a hint of the bigger scope of market penetration. Definitely not a passing fad.
Two avenues, I recommend doing both!
https://www.splunk.com/page/road_map_vote contact the product team and participate
Submit an enhancement request through the support portal.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all.
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/courses/splunk-fundamentals-2.html
Download the course overview, then go to the Splunk docs to dig into every item. Go two to three layers deep. Be sure to understand all the different ways to use the commands listed.
If they meet the criteria here, then send me a PM with your email address and I'll loop you in with the program manager.
> We’ve got good news and exciting news. The good news is you are current and will be eligible for a one-year recertification window under the new program. The exciting news is that this new certification is bigger and better than ever. Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect is an all-encompassing Architect certification, meaning it includes Cluster Administration and Troubleshooting Splunk Enterprise as part of its prerequisite coursework. From October 1, 2018 to October 1, 2019, you will be eligible to register for the Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect exam even if you haven't completed these two courses. Be sure to act within this recertification window. Candidates who do not pass the Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect exam by October 1, 2019, will be subject to the full certification path including these courses and all prerequisite exams.
It is a bit of a unicorn! In case you aren’t aware, the HF requirement for many TA’s is due to the presence in that package of Python as an app platform component, and not due in any way to the features of a HF in itself. In fact, HFs should be used vert sparingly, as explained in part in this blog post: https://www.splunk.com/blog/2016/12/12/universal-or-heavy-that-is-the-question.html
We used to support a lightweight forwarder package which didn’t do the heavy bit of parsing and sending up cooked data to the indexers, and it had Python, but that was deprecated a while ago in order to reduce the support, test, and release engineering burden. We might still ship it, but I haven’t looked in a while. But don’t use it, the UF is a better choice most of the time.
If you're looking for a nice set of data to work with for query and dashboard practise for security you can use the Security Datasets Project.
(I work for Splunk)
I mentioned it in my post above, but yes you can use the 500mb/day free license at home. And since you're a customer you can request a free 50gb/day license for non-production use. https://www.splunk.com/en_us/resources/personalized-dev-test-licenses.html
> A Splunk indexer requires 12 vCPU and the AWS instance types are 8 or 16vCPU so you will either be underpowered or overpaying.
This completely depends on volume of data ingestion and search usage. 12 vCPU and 12 GB RAM is reference hardware which can support 1.7 TB/day if no searching or other activity occurs. Also bear in mind that these are VMs, so they're shared resources underneath.
Check out these two docs from Splunk on deploying in AWS: https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/white-papers/splunk-enterprise-on-aws-deployment-guidelines.pdf
Seen this best practices tech brief PDF yet?
Or this just published AWS QuickStart?
> Splunk is probably your best option if you want to stay in the Windows world, they license based on log throughput per day, the free license covers 1GB (or maybe it's 2GB) per day
500 Mb actually. I've found Splunk to be flexible and easy to use, but you inevitably end up feeding it more and more data as you realize how powerful it is, and it gets really expensive.
You can easily forward those with Splunk's universal forwarder. Splunk's primary use case is log forwarding and management, so it would be pretty absurd if it couldn't do that. No matter the kind of log or whether it's stored locally or sent over the network, Splunk can send and process it. The universal forwarder is a lightweight process you run on all of your domain controllers and other servers. You can put it on any host you want, no matter the OS.
Full instructions for collecting Windows event logs:
Splunk can do absolutely everything ArcSight does, plus a lot more. The only real usability downside to switching to Splunk is that the search language isn't necessarily optimized for security event correlation in the same way a classic SIEM like ArcSight is, so you might have to write somewhat longer queries to correlate across different event types.
And the other downside is that in some cases Splunk can be a lot more expensive, depending on how much data you are indexing.
Here is the certification handbook which will answer all your questions. Short answer yes you need to have power user cert first, no courses are required.
https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/training/Splunk-Certification-Candidate-Handbook.pdf
I should have started by asking why are you after this information or what you plan to do with it?
The account team and the appropriate stakeholders on your side would be in a position to provide specific information on the quote.
Splunk does publish list pricing on the website. (https://www.splunk.com/en_us/view/pricing/SP-CAAADFV)
There's a big difference between learning how to use Splunk, which at it's core is just a data and analytics platform, and advancing from a helpdesk role into security. The first one can be done for free online, the second requires a lot more including a broader understanding of technology. A SIEM is just one of many tools used in security. It's knowing what to do with that tool that will get you into a security position. There's a plethora of posts on this sub about how to go about that path from helpdesk to security that you can read, but I would recommend starting to study the content of the Security+ exam to give you that overview of what IT Security is really about and get into the basics.
That said, if you want to learn about how to use something like Splunk, I suggest going through their free Fundamentals I training.
The Splunk Core Certified User certification isn't a prerequisite for the Power User exam currently: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/certification-track/splunk-core-certified-power-user/overview.html
Generally I’d recommend following the ES End User learning path, found here: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/free-courses/overview.html
Of the courses you have available the Power User cert matches the best, since it aligns with the Fundamentals 1/2/3 courses earlier in that learning path.
I see you’ve mentioned a preference toward the ES admin exam, but be aware that it’s fairly tightly focussed on managing ES, rather than actually using the tool. I wouldn’t really bother if you’re looking for an analyst role.
They have a path defined for this. Start with the fundamentals, skip the administration.
Also, check out Boss of the Soc. It's an open data set. https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/security/what-you-need-to-know-about-boss-of-the-soc.html
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/security/botsv3-dataset-released.html
You won't be able to skip to the exam, as one of the pre-reqs is that you have taken the courses: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/certification-track/splunk-enterprise-certified-admin.html
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!
You should be able to find everything you need here :) https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/training/Splunk-Certification-Candidate-Handbook.pdf
you mean the one posted to their website? https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/certification-track/splunk-core-certified-advanced-power-user.html
Alright, I'm back. Here are a few resources.
- Splunk Blogs - You can filter by security, and a lot of the posts will have queries, along with links to other related blogs.
- .Conf 2020 Repository - Here are all of our security-related .conf talks. Some videos run a little long, but lots of useful info.
- David Veuve's tech blog - This is the guy that created SSE. He has a lot of valuable posts and videos too.
- Splunk was looking for a Security Specialist in Tokyo so I volunteered (aside & shameless plug: Splunk is hiring! If you or someone you know is interested in working at Splunk, check out the openings!) at our SKO 2018; nine months later the family and I were in Tokyo. We saw it as an opportunity for adventure, to help the global business, and I grew up here as a kid. I speak Japanese and am learning more "business Japanese" as an adult.
- Yeah, I just started playing about three moths ago as something to focus on during the pandemic. A friend and I completed two 55+km missions on bike, so I've been getting exercise as well as seeing parts of Tokyo I would have otherwise never seen.
I would at least take the free courses:
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/free-courses/overview.html
Someone also posted a link to videos a few days ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Splunk/comments/jvuud7/30videos_10_hrs_course_content_a_complete/
That being said, I would treat Splunk like any other enterprise software you may have in your org. The same way people pay for network training or DB certifications, I would ask my employer to pay for Splunk training.
Your primarily learning SPL, so 500MB indexing a day, or importing "free" data (like BOTS), should be enough.
https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/3353/
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/form/discover-the-power-of-spl.html
Go to the site here:
Splunk Core Certified Power User Exam
Get the Exam Study Guide. From there, download the Test Blueprint. That will have every competency covered in the exam.
If you're not already running Splunk Enterprise at home, you should be. Single instance install is super easy and will allow you to dig into everything you will need to know for User and Power User.
Good luck!
Not sure how it's possible that your colleagues got the Certified Core Consultant cert without completing the prerequisite courses and exams. Are you sure they didn't have the old consultant cert and just took the exam to update it to the new cert?
You can't even attend the Core Implementation course if you haven't completed the prerequisite courses.
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/certification-track/splunk-core-certified-consultant.html
I believe you might be looking for something similar to what’s under Capture values from multivalue fields in the Splunk Docs. I could not link to that sub header unfortunately.
https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.6/Viz/DrilldownLinkToURL
I am assuming the field that contains the urls is multi value meaning that when you give over one of the URLs, only it only highlights and not both.
Edit: If you have an active entitlement for OnDemand Services and have available credits, you can submit a support case using the service catalog item for building a dashboard. https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/legal/splunk-on-demand-services-catalog.pdf
I have experience with Splunk. which you can get on-site or cloud deployment. Splunk costs per gigabyte ingested, so the cost will vary depending on how much logs you're generating. There are some open-source systems; here's a link to get you started on that research: https://geekflare.com/open-source-centralized-logging/
Works well and is easy to setup for storing your own and you are only paying for S3.
There is also https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/cloud/dynamic-data-data-retention-options-in-splunk-cloud.html which is from what I've heard similar to the above but Splunk managed. I haven't run into anyone using it, I've heard it's a bit pricey.
Splunk is a structured data collector/aggregator - the end goal of which is to be able to search all of that data for "useful" things
Splunk certifications have value (and I'm not just saying that as someone who's been through a lot of the classes): but only if you're going to use them
Being a certified Splunk Architect, for example, means bupkis if you're not working with data (log files, http streams, netflow, IoT, etc)
You are required to take the classes in order - see the training handbook: https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/training/Splunk-Certification-Candidate-Handbook.pdf
At this year's Splunk conference .Conf19, Porsche officials explained how they used data sent to Splunk to build their new electric Taycan. Pretty cool.
Splunk is known for being able to do just that (among others): https://www.splunk.com/en_us/it-operations/predictive-analytics.html
Visit conf.splunk.com and check the 2018 and 2019 presentations; you’ll find a lot of real world use cases together with enough theory to point you in the right direction. /r/devops, /r/learnmachinelearning and /r/splunk should help complement your quest.
*Not affiliated to Splunk, only a fan of their collateral
To be fair I haven't chased it much, and yes the licensing costs of Enterprise Splunk is silly.
But there is a small, free version: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/software/features-comparison-chart.html
For reference, this is the doc OP is referring to: https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/white-papers/splunk-enterprise-on-aws-deployment-guidelines.pdf
Are you looking to learn it or get certified?
For learning Splunk the 3rd party training "might" be ok.
For certifications Splunk has prerequisites for attending their official training.
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/program-guide.html
I have been working with Splunk in an advanced role for many years. Do I need to complete the prerequisite coursework?
Yes. For specific questions or 1:1 guidance regarding your particular path to certification, please contact us directly at .
Splunk is the software that is used to collect and analyze the data from the machines. In addition to marketing, they also use the data to optimize service and replenishment routes. https://www.splunk.com/blog/2016/09/27/emdf.html
Ok, we have 6 public certs and a couple of accreditations for partners (as you know) that I would also want on there. Looks like this page (https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training.html#certificationtrack) has some nice icons...
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This is looking like a bit of work to setup so it flows well, so won't happen today. But it's on my todo. Meanwhile, I can certainly fez you up. :)
What Splunk Certs do you have already?
For what you're doing today, you should have at least Power User. For what you want to do later, Splunk Admin would be required... or at least get a higher paying jerb.
Splunk Architect cert will net you the most for pay: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/certification-track/splunk-enterprise-certified-architect.html
Personally, I had Power User before I moved from Federal Contractor to Splunk officially. My LinkedIn was full of job offers for $110k to $140k for having a Power User cert in my area, DC Metro. After getting Splunk Architect at Splunk, I consistently get offers for $180k to $190k. Again, DC Metro. We have the close to the highest average salary on the East Coast and naturally cost of living.
Have some questions for your interviewer. Think about what you want to get out of the role.
In addition to the free download, if you have the time you could do the Free Splunk Fundamentals 1.
https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/solution-guides/splunk-quick-reference-guide.pdf
I like to give this to newbies to Splunk :-)
Hey!
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You are right - the certification process has changed drastically but I do think it is for good measure, even if there have been some teething problems.
Honestly for Architect you will just need to lean on real world experience, so my best suggestion is to get some VM's or dev tin etc and attempt to build a distributed splunk instance, rinse and repeat until you can do it without any additional assistance from docs etc.
The Architect cert is quite a step up from Admin so just be prepared for some hands on testing under timed conditions, closed book.
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If you have a look at the Splunk Architect Exam Blueprint: https://www.splunk.com/pdfs/training/Splunk-Test-Blueprint-Architect-v.1.1.pdf it should help you out with what areas to focus on for revision, or what areas it will cover.
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Hope this helps & good luck!
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>How should I prepare for power use exam?
The weekend before, take a day and review all the topics of the Fundamentals I and II courses (which the Power User exam covers). Work with/build these things in your test environment.
For example, one of the topics of Fundamentals 2 is macros. Do you know how to build one? Use one? Pass parameters to it? Go into your test instance, build one out, use it in a search, make sure you understand it.
Review your notes on how to do these things or Google around if you get stuck. The important thing is to get some hands-on practice with these things.
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>Is Fundamental 2 going to be enough?
Review the material from Fundamentals 1 and 2. That will be sufficient for this test.
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>Is there anyway I can get some sample questions?
Not that I know of. But if you practice working with these things in your test instance, you will be set.
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>If I fail and retake the power user exam, are the questions going to be the same for the retake?
Questions will be changed, but they will be similar the second time around. if you do fail, just take note of the problem areas and review them again in your test environment.
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Have a look at what is expected from the cert, look at the course objectives to each class, and you will know what to study and practice: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/certification-track/splunk-core-certified-power-user/overview.html
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Best of luck OP, you'll be great.
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If it's already writing to a log, then install splunk on one of your boxes and install the forwarders on the PIs and set the log locations as a monitored log. From there you can build dashboards and stuff to your heart's content. Otherwise cat the logs together :p
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https://www.splunk.com and click free splunk on right.
Late to the party but this might be useful for you:
You can register for a free Splunk provided class that will help you get introduced to Splunk and show you the ropes - https://www.splunk.com/en_us/training/courses/splunk-fundamentals-1.html
You can even get certified as Splunk User (also free).
I've implemented anomaly detection and prediction and also working with integrating the MLTK into ITSI.
The Machine Learning ToolKit is a good start but I never got accurate results using the anomaly detection module. So I decided to build it in core SPL instead and use the downsampled line chart viz from the MLTK to help with the visualizations.
You should first define your objectives and document your current state and create a project plan with goals. Based off those goals, you should then determine what data needs to be used and if its currently logging in Splunk. If yes, then you need to see how your trends look, if your dealing with cyclic type data then this will be much easier to establish a pattern and predict future values. You should also see if your data is normally distributed by binning your field and see how how far the outliers are away from the mean. This will help determine is linear regression is right for your use case.
Below is a great link to get started
https://www.splunk.com/blog/2018/01/19/cyclical-statistical-forecasts-and-anomalies-part-1.html
Feel free to PM me or reach out on LinkedIn if you have any questions!
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/products/pricing/calculator.html
5GB = $1,200 (per GB at this usage) x 5 = 6000 / year
100GB = $600 x 100 = 60,000 / year
BTW for Enterprise (ie non cloud) they are now pushing a 3 year licence term "annual licence",.
Go to this link, create a splunk education account. Once you are signed in, add "Splunk Tutorial 6.x (eLearning)" to your cart - you have access for 30 days.
They give you links to all the course materials and demo data, you just install Splunk on your PC and go!
Hey, I talked to splunk customer support. They said "registration" refers to registration for the courses, and not registration of an account.
This page (accessed from clicking the Training button in the top bar of the splunk homepage) is where you go to register for courses. There should be a "Free Fundamentals 1" course that has a "View and Register" button underneath it. You'd click the View and Register in order to start your course and start your 30-day window.
To confirm you're not registered for any courses, from the page I just linked you, click the "Log in to Splunk Education" button on the right. That'll take you to your profile showing any courses you have opened or completed. The Registrations tab should be empty. If so, then you're good!
Nope, if you fail the first time, you can re-take the exam 5 days later. If you fail the second attempt you have to wait 30 days, fail a third time you wait 60 days. More details are here: https://www.splunk.com/view/SP-CAAAP2W If you already registered for the exam and got the email with your specialized link, I don't know how long this link is valid, but I am pretty sure it will be okay for a while (30 days maybe? I don't know).
I googled "multi tenant splunk" and found this article
I'd install Splunk Stream forwarder on any (or several) NTP clients and watch for that traffic and report up on transaction times.
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/products/splunk-stream.html https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/StreamApp/7.1.1/DeployStreamApp/ProtocolDetection
Stream is passive, so this wouldn't be a health check. Instead, you'll only be able to observe the UDP traffic when it does occur. I don't recall ntpcloent specifics to know how often that's done, but I bet it's predictable.
Looks like NTP is on the detect-only list, which means you can't extract fields from a conversation--instead you just know when it happens. But you'd see the request go one way, then back.
I've definitely seen this in Vancouver, BC - theres a fair amount of people looking for capable candidates. Here's one for example: https://www.splunk.com/view/SP-CAAAGK3?jvi=oOWj4fwR
I think if thats the way you want to go, do some side project(s) relative to the subject. Find out if there are local companies who work in that area and kind of stalk their linkedin/website/blog/twitter/facebook and see what theyre all about. It can give you a good sense of the company and its employees. I personally like to look at the past experiences of employees (via linkedin) at companies im interested in to see how they got to that point just to get some perspective. If you're not interested in doing grad school, don't do it - if you are, give it some more thought and go ahead. Don't go for the sake of 'they wont hire me otherwise'. If you can prove you are capable, you will get hired. Also I've heard of many cases where PhD students cant develop any damn thing, a lot of my peers lament about this, so be wary of becoming one of those people.