Book Image

Splunk Essentials - Second Edition

By : Betsy Page Sigman, Soni, Erickson Delgado
Book Image

Splunk Essentials - Second Edition

By: Betsy Page Sigman, Soni, Erickson Delgado

Overview of this book

Splunk is a search, analysis, and reporting platform for machine data, which has a high adoption on the market. More and more organizations want to adopt Splunk to use their data to make informed decisions. This book is for anyone who wants to manage data with Splunk. You’ll start with very basics of Splunk— installing Splunk—and then move on to searching machine data with Splunk. You will gather data from different sources, isolate them by indexes, classify them into source types, and tag them with the essential fields. After this, you will learn to create various reports, XML forms, and alerts. You will then continue using the Pivot Model to transform the data models into visualization. You will also explore visualization with D3 in Splunk. Finally you’ll be provided with some real-world best practices in using Splunk.

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Splunk Essentials - Second Edition
Betsy Page Sigman | Soni | Erickson Delgado
Sep, 2016 | 3 hours 56 minutes
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Table of Contents (10 chapters)
Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
1. Splunk in Action
1. Splunk in Action
Your Splunk.com account
Installing Splunk on Windows
Creating a Splunk app
Populating data with Eventgen
Controlling Splunk
Configuring Eventgen
Viewing the Destinations app
Creating your first dashboard
Summary
2
2. Bringing in Data
2. Bringing in Data
Splunk and big data
Splunk data sources
Creating indexes
Buckets
Data inputs
Splunk events and fields
Extracting new fields
Summary
3
3. Search Processing Language
3. Search Processing Language
Anatomy of a search
Time modifiers
Filtering search results
Search command - stats
Search command - top/rare
Search commands - chart and timechart
Search command - eval
Search command - rex
Summary
4
4. Data Models and Pivot
4. Data Models and Pivot
Creating a data model
Data model acceleration
Rearranging your dashboard
Summary
5
5. Data Optimization, Reports, Alerts, and Accelerating Searches
5. Data Optimization, Reports, Alerts, and Accelerating Searches
Data classification with event types
Data normalization with tags
Data enrichment with lookups
Creating reports
Creating alerts
Search and report acceleration
Scheduling best practices
Summary indexing
Summary
6
6. Panes of Glass
6. Panes of Glass
Creating effective dashboards
Types of dashboard
Form inputs
Creating a time range input
Creating a radio input
Creating a dropdown input
Static Real-Time dashboard
Creating a map called a choropleth
Summary
7
7. Splunk SDK for JavaScript and D3.js
7. Splunk SDK for JavaScript and D3.js
Introduction to Splunk SDKs
Practical applications of Splunk's SDK
Creating the final dashboard\jobs.js
Summary
8
8. HTTP Event Collector
8. HTTP Event Collector
What is the HEC?
How does the HEC work?
How data flows to the HEC?
Summary
9
9. Best Practices and Advanced Queries
9. Best Practices and Advanced Queries
Temporary indexes and oneshot indexing
Searching within an index
Search within a limited time frame
Quick searches via fast mode
Using event sampling
Splunk Universal Forwarders
Advanced queries
How to improve logs
Summary

Data normalization with tags

Tags in Splunk are useful for grouping events with related field values. Unlike event types, which are based on specified search commands, tags are created and mapped to specific fields. You can also have multiple tags assigned to the same field, and each tag can be assigned to that field for a specific reason.

The simplest use-case scenario when using tags is for classifying IP addresses. In our Eventgen logs, three IP addresses are automatically generated. We will create tags against these IP addresses that would allow us to classify them based on different conditions:

IP address

Tags

10.2.1.33

main, patched, east

10.2.1.34

main, patched, west

10.2.1.35

backup, east

In our server farm of three servers, we are going to group them by purpose, patch status, and geolocation. We will achieve this using tags, as shown in the following steps:

  1. Begin by using the following search command:

          SPL> index=main server_ip=10.2.1.33

  2. Expand the first event by clicking...

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