Splunk SPLK-1003 - Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.1/Indexer/HowSplunkstoresindexes

Once further conditions are met (for example, the index reaches some maximum number of warm buckets), the indexer begins to roll the warm buckets to cold, based on their age. It always selects the oldest warm bucket to roll to cold. Buckets continue to roll to cold as they age in this manner. Cold buckets reside in a different location from hot and warm buckets. You can configure the location so that cold buckets reside on cheaper storage.

When configuring multiple LDAP strategies in Splunk, the order in which they are listed in the authentication.conf file determines the sequence in which Splunk searches them during authentication.

From the official Splunk documentation:

" To configure multiple LDAP strategies, set the authSettings setting to a comma-separated list of all strategies, in the order in which you want to query the strategies. "

— Configure LDAP using configuration files - Splunk Documentation

Therefore, Splunk will search each LDAP strategy in the order specified in the authSettings parameter of the authentication.conf file.

" When ingesting event data, the measured data volume is based on the new raw data that is placed into the indexing pipeline. Because the data is measured at the indexing pipeline, data that is filetered and dropped prior to indexing does not count against the license volume qota. "

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.6/Admin/HowSplunklicensingworks

A Heavy Forwarder is a Splunk instance that can parse and filter data before forwarding it to another Splunk instance, such as an indexer1. A Heavy Forwarder can also perform index-time field extractions using the TRANSFORMS setting2.

The TRANSFORMS setting is used to configure data transformations in the transforms.conf file3. The transforms.conf file contains settings and values that you can use to configure host and source type overrides, anonymize sensitive data, route events to different indexes, create index-time and search-time field extractions, and set up lookup tables3.

The TRANSFORMS setting can be deployed to the Heavy Forwarder where the syslog files are being monitored, so that the logs can be rerouted based on the event message before they are forwarded to the indexer2. This can improve the performance and efficiency of data processing and indexing2.

The deployer is a Splunk Enterprise instance that you use to distribute apps and certain other configuration updates to search head cluster members. The set of updates that the deployer distributes is called the configuration bundle.https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.1.3/DistSearch/PropagateSHCconfigurationchanges#:~:text=The%20deployer%20is%20a%20Splunk,is%20called%20the%20configuration%20bundle.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.5/Updating/Updateconfigurations

First line says it all: " The deployment server distributes deployment apps to clients. "

The Splunk indexing process consists of three main phases: Input, Parsing, and Indexing. Understanding these phases is crucial for configuring data inputs and managing data flow within Splunk.

Input Phase: Splunk receives data from various sources, such as files, network ports, or scripted inputs.

Parsing Phase: Splunk breaks the data into individual events, applies transformations, and extracts timestamps.

Indexing Phase: Splunk writes the parsed events to disk and creates indexes for efficient searching.

From the official Splunk documentation:

" The data pipeline consists of three main phases: input, parsing, and indexing. "

— How the Splunk platform indexes data - Splunk Documentation

Therefore, the correct order of the indexing process is: Input phase → Parsing phase → Indexing phase.

Adding further clarity and quoting same Splunk reference URL from @giubal "

" To keep configuration settings consistent across peer nodes, configuration files are managed from the cluster master, which pushes the files to the slave-app directories on the peer nodes. Files in the slave-app directories have the highest precedence in a cluster peer ' s configuration. Here is the expanded precedence order for cluster peers:

1.Slave-app local directories -- highest priority

2. System local directory

3. App local directories

4. Slave-app default directories

5. App default directories

6. System default directory --lowest priority