SPLK-1003 Practice Questions

The correct answer is C and

D.  

A universal forwarder is a lightweight agent that can forward data to a Splunk deployment, but it does not perform any parsing or indexing on the data. A search head is a Splunk component that handles search requests and distributes them to indexers, but it does not process incoming data.

A heavy forwarder is a Splunk component that can perform parsing, filtering, routing, and aggregation on the data before forwarding it to indexers or other destinations. A heavy forwarder can break a stream of syslog inputs into individual events based on the line breaker and should linemerge settings in the inputs.conf file1.

An indexer is a Splunk component that stores and indexes data, making it searchable. An indexer can also break a stream of syslog inputs into individual events based on the props.conf file settings, such as TIME_FORMAT, MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD, and line_breaker2.

A Splunk component is a software process that performs a specific function in a Splunk deployment, such as data collection, data processing, data storage, data search, or data visualization.

Syslog is a standard protocol for logging messages from network devices, such as routers, switches, firewalls, or servers. Syslog messages are typically sent over UDP or TCP to a central syslog server or a Splunk instance.

Breaking a stream of syslog inputs into individual events means separating the data into discrete records that can be indexed and searched by Splunk. Each event should have a timestamp, a host, a source, and a sourcetype, which are the default fields that Splunk assigns to the data.