SPLK-2002 Practice Questions 2 — 50 Questions

Question 1

Which path is used to define where Splunk stores the actual indexed data for a specific index?

Accepted Answer

homePath. homePath is the primary location for hot and warm buckets.

Answer

coldPath

Answer

frozenPath

Answer

thawedPath

Question 2

Which TWO of the following are valid ways to monitor the status of an Indexer Cluster?

Accepted Answer

Using the CLI command 'splunk show cluster-status'.. You can use the CLI 'show cluster-status' command or the monitoring console UI.

Answer

Checking the license usage logs.

Answer

Reviewing the forwarder logs.

Answer

Running a search on the indexers directly.

Question 3

How can you verify the current health and performance of your indexers using the Monitoring Console?

Accepted Answer

Indexer: Instance dashboard. The 'Indexer: Instance' dashboard provides real-time metrics on throughput, CPU, and disk usage per indexer.

Answer

License usage dashboard

Answer

Deployment Health dashboard

Answer

Search Performance dashboard

Question 4

Which THREE actions occur during the SmartStore bucket lifecycle?

Accepted Answer

Upload bucket to remote storage. SmartStore involves moving buckets to remote storage, caching locally, and evicting local copies.

Answer

Automatic daily re-indexing

Answer

Auto-increase replication factor

Question 5

Which TWO areas should be checked when troubleshooting slow data ingestion?

Accepted Answer

Parsing queue fill percentage. The parsing queue and the output queue are the two most common bottlenecks during ingestion.

Answer

License master usage

Answer

User authentication speed

Answer

Search head memory usage

Question 6

Which TWO tools in the Splunk UI assist in performance troubleshooting?

Accepted Answer

Monitoring Console. The Search Inspector and the Monitoring Console are the standard tools for performance diagnosis.

Answer

Deployment Server

Answer

License Master

Answer

Upload Data Wizard

Question 7

Which component in Splunk is required to be the central point for managing licenses in a clustered environment?

Accepted Answer

The License Master. The License Master (LM) is the central authority for all license entitlements in a cluster.

Answer

The Deployment Server

Answer

The Search Head

Answer

The Cluster Master

Question 8

You want to perform a rolling restart of an Indexer Cluster without stopping ingestion. What configuration ensures that indexers remain available?

Accepted Answer

Set 'restart_mode=rolling'.. The rolling restart mechanism automatically manages peer availability, but you should also ensure your forwarders are configured with indexing-side load balancing.

Answer

Disable the indexer peers.

Answer

Stop the Cluster Master first.

Answer

Restart all indexers at once.

Answer

Set 'replication_factor=1'.

Question 9

When a Search Head Cluster is running in a multi-site environment, what configuration ensures search results are optimized?

Accepted Answer

Search affinity settings in server.conf.. Configuring 'site' in server.conf on each SHC member allows the cluster to use search affinity to query the nearest indexers.

Answer

Index-level bucket settings.

Answer

Disabling search head replication.

Answer

Site-specific replication factor.

Answer

Increasing the search timeout.

Question 10

What is the primary function of the 'Cluster Master' in an Indexer Cluster?

Accepted Answer

To manage the indexer cluster's configuration and bucket state. The CM coordinates the cluster, including bucket replication, managing peers, and distributing configuration.

Answer

To handle incoming data from universal forwarders

Answer

To serve the Splunk user interface

Answer

To search across all indexers

Question 11

What is the primary function of the 'search_factor' in an indexer cluster?

Accepted Answer

The number of searchable copies of each bucket. The search_factor dictates how many copies of the searchable data are maintained in the cluster to ensure high availability for search queries.

Answer

The maximum number of concurrent searches

Answer

The number of indexer peers in the cluster

Answer

The number of search heads allowed in the cluster

Question 12

A customer needs to decommission a single indexer peer from an Indexer Cluster without losing data. Which step is mandatory to ensure all data is safely migrated to other peers?

Accepted Answer

Run 'splunk remove cluster-peers' on the CM. Putting the indexer into 'maintenance_mode' or using the 'splunk remove cluster-peers' command allows the cluster to redistribute buckets.

Answer

Force a cluster bundle update

Answer

Delete the indexer directory on the CM

Answer

Simply shut down the indexer service

Question 13

You are troubleshooting a Search Head Cluster where a member node cannot join the cluster. Which log file on the node is the most useful for diagnosing the communication issue?

Accepted Answer

splunkd.log. The 'splunkd.log' file contains detailed information about search head cluster communication, heartbeat, and member joining processes.

Answer

web_access.log

Answer

audit.log

Answer

metrics.log

Question 14

Which THREE configuration changes are required to enable bucket freezing to an external archival location using a custom script?

Accepted Answer

Set coldToFrozenScript. Setting coldToFrozenScript, ensuring the script is in the path, and setting the frozenPath are required.

Answer

Change index replication factor

Answer

Enable indexer clustering

Question 15

What is the impact of having too many small buckets in an index?

Accepted Answer

Degraded search performance due to high overhead. Small buckets increase the number of file handles and metadata entries, which slows down search performance due to the overhead of scanning many files.

Answer

Faster data rolling

Answer

Reduced disk space usage

Answer

Improved search performance

Question 16

What is the effect of using the 'tstats' command in a search?

Accepted Answer

It queries the TSIDX files directly, improving speed. The 'tstats' command operates on indexed metadata (TSIDX files) and is significantly faster than standard searches for aggregate statistics.

Answer

It increases the number of concurrent searches allowed

Answer

It bypasses the parsing queue

Answer

It forces the use of more CPU cores

Question 17

Which TWO methods are recommended to optimize search performance when dealing with large datasets?

Accepted Answer

Use data models and acceleration. Using indexed fields and leveraging data models are the two most effective ways to optimize searches.

Answer

Use the 'transaction' command

Answer

Increase the number of indexers

Answer

Disable all authentication

Question 18

When designing a large-scale multisite cluster, which factor most significantly impacts the search performance when running searches across all sites?

Accepted Answer

Network latency between sites. Cross-site network latency is the biggest bottleneck for search performance in multisite indexer clusters.

Answer

The number of buckets per indexer

Answer

The number of users

Answer

The number of search heads

Question 19

Which THREE factors should be considered when planning the hardware requirements for a multisite indexer cluster?

Accepted Answer

Disk I/O throughput. Disk I/O, network bandwidth between sites, and CPU capacity for concurrent indexing/searching are all critical for cluster stability.

Answer

The color of the server chassis

Answer

The number of concurrent web users

Question 20

A Search Head Cluster (SHC) is experiencing frequent 'captain election' issues during high-load periods. Upon reviewing the logs, you notice network latency spikes between nodes. Which parameter in the SHC configuration should be adjusted to allow for more tolerance in node communication?

Accepted Answer

heartbeat_timeout. The heartbeat_timeout setting in the SHC configuration controls how long a node can go without a heartbeat before it is considered down, which can be increased to mitigate network latency issues.

Answer

election_timeout

Answer

replication_factor

Answer

search_timeout