Book Image

Splunk 7.x Quick Start Guide

By : James H. Baxter
Book Image

Splunk 7.x Quick Start Guide

By: James H. Baxter

Overview of this book

Splunk is a leading platform and solution for collecting, searching, and extracting value from ever increasing amounts of big data - and big data is eating the world! This book covers all the crucial Splunk topics and gives you the information and examples to get the immediate job done. You will find enough insights to support further research and use Splunk to suit any business environment or situation. Splunk 7.x Quick Start Guide gives you a thorough understanding of how Splunk works. You will learn about all the critical tasks for architecting, implementing, administering, and utilizing Splunk Enterprise to collect, store, retrieve, format, analyze, and visualize machine data. You will find step-by-step examples based on real-world experience and practical use cases that are applicable to all Splunk environments. There is a careful balance between adequate coverage of all the critical topics with short but relevant deep-dives into the configuration options and steps to carry out the day-to-day tasks that matter. By the end of the book, you will be a confident and proficient Splunk architect and administrator.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Installing Splunk for free

It will be very helpful while you're learning about Splunk to have an environment where you can navigate through directories, inspect and modify configuration files, and experiment freely with Splunk menu options and features without jeopardizing a Splunk installation in your Enterprise, even if you have the access rights to do so. You can install a free version of Splunk on your laptop or personal server that provides this flexibility from this link: https://www.splunk.com/en_us/download/splunk-enterprise.html.

Complete the form to create a Splunk account (or log in if you already have one), click to agree to the Splunk Software License Agreement, and click Create your account. From the downloads page, click the Windows, Linux, or macOS tabs at the top and select the version appropriate for your platform. You will need to agree to the software license again, then click Start Your Download Now, and save the file to disk. The next web page that appears provides links to installation videos and documents for your chosen environment; the installation process is very straightforward, so you shouldn't have any trouble.

If you choose to Launch browser with Splunk Enterprise when the installation finishes, you will log in with the default username of admin, and password of changeme. Change the password upon the first login.

And as they say at the end of the installation videos—dig in and start exploring!