SPLK-2002 Timed Hard Questions — 25 Difficult Questions

Question 1

You are configuring Data Model Acceleration on a heavy forwarder. Why is this not a recommended architectural practice?

Accepted Answer

Acceleration requires the indexer components for summary storage. Heavy forwarders lack the indexing and search head components required to manage and serve accelerated summaries efficiently.

Answer

Heavy forwarders do not support accelerated datamodels

Answer

The license will be consumed incorrectly

Answer

CPU resources on the forwarder are too high

Question 2

An indexer cluster is suffering from 'bucket repair' loops. What is the most likely cause related to the bucket lifecycle?

Accepted Answer

Bucket corruption preventing indexer recovery. Bucket corruption is often due to improper shutdown or hardware failure, but repair loops specifically indicate an issue with the bucket's integrity on disk.

Answer

Insufficient replication factor

Answer

Excessive search concurrency

Answer

Misconfigured cold path

Question 3

A customer is experiencing 'Search peer [peer-name] is not responding' errors during indexer maintenance. Which configuration parameter in server.conf should be tuned to prevent search failures during rolling restarts?

Accepted Answer

restart_timeout. The 'restart_timeout' parameter in the [clustering] stanza controls how long a search head waits for a peer to return before marking it as down during a rolling restart.

Answer

peer_down_timeout

Answer

max_search_time

Answer

heartbeat_timeout

Answer

search_retry_timeout

Question 4

Which configuration file and stanza are used to define the bucket lifecycle policy for a custom index named 'customer_data'?

Accepted Answer

indexes.conf [customer_data]. indexes.conf is the standard file where index-specific lifecycle settings are defined.

Answer

datamodels.conf [customer_data]

Answer

server.conf [customer_data]

Answer

inputs.conf [customer_data]

Question 5

A large-scale Splunk deployment is experiencing 'bucket rolling' latency. Upon investigation, you determine that the indexer is waiting for the indexer cluster manager to acknowledge the bucket status. Which indexer clustering setting directly impacts the speed of bucket replication during the rolling process?

Accepted Answer

max_replication_streams. replication_factor impacts the number of copies, but the throughput of bucket replication is managed by the replication queue settings.

Answer

search_factor

Answer

service_interval

Answer

heartbeat_timeout

Question 6

If an Indexer Cluster has a replication_factor of 3 and search_factor of 2, how many searchable copies of a bucket are maintained across the cluster?

Accepted Answer

2. The search factor determines how many copies of a bucket are searchable. If search_factor is 2, the cluster ensures at least two copies are available for searching.

Answer

5

Answer

4

Answer

1

Answer

3

Question 7

You need to perform a clean upgrade of an indexer in a cluster. You place the indexer into maintenance mode. What happens to the replication and search factor during this time?

Accepted Answer

Bucket fix-up activities are suspended for this peer. Maintenance mode prevents the Master from triggering bucket fix-ups (re-replication) when that specific node goes offline, preventing unnecessary data movement.

Answer

The Master initiates bucket re-replication immediately

Answer

The search factor is lowered to zero

Answer

Search queries are routed to other peers

Question 8

A Splunk administrator needs to identify why a specific search is experiencing high 'Disk Read' wait times. Which tool or log source should be utilized to correlate search IDs with specific disk latency metrics?

Accepted Answer

Audit logs correlated with indexer metrics via the Monitoring Console. The _internal index contains the audit.log and search-activity metadata which, when correlated with OS-level metrics (e.g., via Splunk_TA_nix), provides visibility into disk I/O bottlenecks.

Answer

Search Inspector

Answer

Splunk Web UI Performance Monitor

Answer

splunkd.log

Question 9

A user complains that a search is slow despite having a small time range. The Search Inspector reveals 'event_count' is high, but 'scanned_count' is also high. What is the likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The search is not using an indexed field to filter data. If the scanned count is much higher than the event count, the search is reading too much data from disk because it is not effectively filtering by indexed fields (e.g., using terms that are not indexed).

Answer

The indexer has too much memory

Answer

Data model acceleration is failing

Answer

The search head is underpowered

Question 10

In a multisite indexer cluster, a bucket with replication factor 3 has its primary copy in Site 1 and secondary copies in Site 2. A network partition occurs. Which setting determines if the indexer will accept new data if it cannot reach the Site 2 indexers?

Accepted Answer

site_replication_factor. site_replication_factor determines the behavior for bucket replication across sites.

Answer

min_replication_factor

Answer

search_factor_per_site

Answer

cluster_replication_queue

Question 11

In a SmartStore architecture, what happens when a bucket is evicted from local cache?

Accepted Answer

The local disk space is freed. In SmartStore, eviction removes the copy from the indexer's local disk, but the bucket persists in remote object storage.

Answer

The bucket is moved to the cold path

Answer

The bucket is no longer searchable

Answer

The bucket is deleted from remote storage

Question 12

What is the primary architectural trade-off when using very short 'maxHotSpanSecs' values?

Accepted Answer

Increased metadata overhead on the indexer. Frequent bucket rotation leads to a higher number of buckets, which increases indexer overhead and metadata management.

Answer

Improved data ingestion speed

Answer

Reduced search performance

Answer

Increased compression efficiency

Question 13

Which TWO of the following are true about Indexer Discovery?

Accepted Answer

It dynamically provides a list of indexers to forwarders.. Indexer discovery simplifies management by allowing forwarders to dynamically find indexers without manual config updates.

Answer

It is used for SHC members to find indexers.

Answer

It must be configured on every forwarder.

Answer

It replaces the load balancer.

Question 14

Which THREE conditions cause a bucket to transition from Warm to Cold?

Accepted Answer

Exceeding homePath.maxDataSizeMB. Transitions to cold happen based on the maxWarmDBCount, maxTotalDataSizeMB, or total data age limits.

Answer

Indexing service restart

Answer

Search head cluster member failure

Question 15

What is the purpose of the 'homePath.maxDataSizeMB' setting in indexes.conf?

Accepted Answer

Limits the total size of all hot/warm buckets in the homePath. It restricts the total size of the homePath directory, which forces bucket rotation if exceeded.

Answer

Sets the maximum size of a single hot bucket

Answer

Limits the number of buckets to 100

Answer

Sets the size limit for the cold path

Question 16

Which TWO settings are crucial when planning for bucket replication in a clustered environment?

Accepted Answer

site_replication_factor. Replication factor and site replication factor are the core components of cluster bucket redundancy.

Answer

listen_port

Answer

max_hot_buckets

Answer

heartbeat_timeout

Question 17

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 18

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 19

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 20

You are managing a large Indexer Cluster and need to reduce the time it takes for a new node to catch up. Which setting allows you to limit the amount of bandwidth used during bucket replication?

Accepted Answer

replication_throttle. The 'replication_throttling' setting in server.conf allows for control over the network bandwidth used for bucket replication, preventing saturation.

Answer

cluster_bandwidth_control

Answer

bandwidth_limit

Answer

max_replication_speed