Machine data has demonstrated an exponential growth in the last decade. There are ample reasons behind it including the increasing number of machines in the IT infrastructure as well as the growing use of IoT devices. The machine data that is derived here holds a lot of valuable info that can drive productivity, visibility, and efficiency for the business. Splunk can handle them more easily.

Spunk is a leading name that was founded for the very purpose of making sense of the machine-generated data. In this blog, we are going to talk about what is Splunk, What is used for, leading to how you can learn Splunk via an online Splunk course. Let’s begin.

What Is Splunk?

Splunk is a scalable, effective, and advanced software platform that indexes and searches the log files that are stored in a system. Splunk analyzes available machine-generated data to offer operational intelligence. One of its key features is that it does not require any database for storing its data because it uses indexes extensively for the same.

The Splunk software is used for monitoring, examining, and searching machine-generated data via a web-style interface. Splunk recognizes data patterns, rant intelligence, produce metrics, and diagnose problems for business operation purposes.

A Brief History of Splunk

Founded by Eric Swan, Michael Baum, and Rob Das in the early 2000s, Splunk came as an inspiration from cave spelunking. They realized that everything makes data and they wanted to extract value from all of it. The technology then founded was centered around a strong search engine that stored and scanned log files inside the system infrastructure.

Today, Splunk has come a long way to become a global company. Its team has grown and so has the solutions it offers today.

What Is Splunk Used For?

There are a lot of things that make up the answer for what is Splunk used for. Since covering them all in a single blog is not possible, here are the key uses of Splunk-

• Splunk is widely used for monitoring and troubleshooting system issues.
• Splunk is employed in generating dashboards and reports.
• Splunk allows the expert in tracking user activity and behavior.
• Splunk enables the professional in monitoring compliance with suggested company policies.

What Does Splunk Do?

Splunk  offers a suite of apps, APIs, and software, along with a lot of flexibility. If you are wondering what does Splunk do, then here are some of the most widely-known Splunk products-

1. Splunk Enterprise – It facilitates in searching, visualizing, and analyzing all the machine-generated data offering actionable insights.
2. Splunk Cloud Platform– It provides data analysis, visualization, and search in the cloud (SaaS).
3. Universal Forwarder– An extremely popular means of getting data into Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Enterprise.
4. SOAR, SIEM & Observability Solutions

Key Benefits of Splunk

1. Easy Implementation 

Splunk is known for being highly scalable and easy to implement.

2. Highly Interactive

Splunk produces analytical reports with highly interactive tables, charts, and graphs, which are then shared with others, making them productive for users.

3. Enable Savings

Splunk helps you in making your system smarter by saving your tags and searches that it deems as important information.

4. Auto Finding Feature

Splunk enables the user to automatically find important information hidden in your data. This saves a lot of time for the user.

Features of Splunk

1. Intuitive User Experience

Splunk has aided in improving the users’ productivity by offering them instant access to associated content and apps.

2. Simplified Management

It produces scalable and highly simplified management for Enterprise Splunk deployment.

3. Rich Developer Environment

Splunk aids in building Splunk apps rapidly via approved web frameworks and languages.

4. Powerful Analytics

Splunk facilitates easier and faster analysis as well as visualization to business users.

What Are the Different Versions of Splunk?

Here is list of the different versions of Splunk and when they released and when their support ended-

• 6.0 – 1 Oct 2013 – 22 Oct 2019
• 6.1 – 6 May 2014 – 22 Oct 2019
• 6.2 – 7 Oct 2014 – 22 Oct 2019
• 6.3 – 22 Sep 2015 – 22 Oct – 2019
• 6.4 – 5 Apr 2016 – 22 Oct 2019
• 6.5 – 27 Sept – 22 Oct 2019
• 6.6 – 2 May – 31 Jan 2020
• 7.0 – 26 Sept 2017 – 31 Jan 2020
• 7.1 – 24 Apr 2018 – 31 Oct 2020
• 7.2 – 2 Oct 2018 – 30 Apr 2021
• 7.3 – 4 June 2019 – 22 Oct 2021
• 8.0 – 22 Oct 2019 – 22 Oct 2021
• 8.1 – 19 Oct 2020 – 19 Apr 2023
• 8.2 – 12 May 2021 – 30 Sep 2023
• 9.0 – 14 June 2022- 14 June 2024
• 9.1 – 28 June 2023 – 28 June 2025

Related Article To Read- Top Splunk Interview Questions & Answers

How Splunk Works?

Splunk is used to search, monitor, and then examine machine-generated Big Data via a web-style interface.

Here is how Splunk works-

1. Splunk Search Head

A Splunk Enterprise instance, in a distributed search environment, handles search management functions and directs search requests to a predetermined set of search peers. The results are merged back to the user.

2. Splunk Indexer

A Splunk Enterprise instance searches the indexed data as a response to search requests.

3. Splunk Forwarder

A key component of the Splunk infrastructure, Splunk Forwarder plays the role of an agent for log collection from remote machines.

How To Learn Splunk?

One of the key things to remember when you decide to begin with this platform is that it has its own query language called Search Processing Language or SPL. Learning Splunk will not happen overnight but here are some ways to make it happen.

1. Enroll In A Splunk Online Training Program-

Learn from industry experts to gain knowledge from their experience and expertise. Enrolling in a trusted Splunk online training program will help you gain knowledge and learn about the existing and upcoming trends and technologies from those who are working in the field.

As you decide to learn under their guidance, you will realize how much more you are gaining than any online tutorial could have given you.

2. Explore Splunk Tutorial-

There are various free and paid tutorials to help both freshers and seasoned professionals. If you are someone who is only looking to understand whether this field is for you or not, then instead of enrolling directly in a paid course, you can watch any Splunk tutorial online. These tutorials are a great means of understanding whether or not you think this course will help in enhancing your career. There is no dearth of good tutorials around this technology and you can find them easily with a single click.

3. Go Through Other Resources-

There are a lot of books that can give you great insights about Splunk. Some of the best books you can turn to for reference are-

• Implementing Splunk by Vincent Bumgarner
• Splunk Essentials by Betsy Page Sigman and Erickson Delgado
• Splunk Introduction by Antun Peicevic
• Exploring Splunk by David Carasso
• Big Data Analytics Using Splunk by Peter Zadrozny and Rah Kodali

Conclusion

No doubt, it is a widely used Big Data analysis tool that also acts as a management tool. If you are interested in making a career in this software, then the best way to go about it is by getting the Splunk certification. We have listed how you learn Splunk in this blog and that road leads you to Splunk certification. Prepare well for the exam and ace it to get certified.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

Q1. Who should learn Splunk?

Ans. Splunk is a great path for those who see themselves working as System Administrators, Machine Learning Engineers, and Analytics Managers. Even a fresher can go for this software platform.

Q2. Do companies use Splunk?

Ans. Companies everywhere around the globe are using this tool because of its high flexibility in various tasks such as security, troubleshooting, and monitoring.

Q3. Is Splunk a tool or a platform?

Ans. It is a data analysis tool used for monitoring and troubleshooting various systems.

Q4. What language is used in Splunk?

Ans. It uses its own language called Search Processing Language or SPL.

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