In this chapter, we began learning about big data and its related characteristics, such as streaming data, analytical data latency, and sparseness. We also covered the types of data that can be brought into Splunk. We then created an index and loaded a sample log file, all while examining the configuration file (.conf) entries made at the file system level. We talked about what fields and events are. And finally, we saw how to extract fields from events and name them so that they can be more useful to us.
In the chapters to come, we'll learn more about these important features of Splunk.