Implementing Splunk 7 : effective operational intelligence to transform machine-generated data into valuable business insight / James D. Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, James D., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Data mining.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (576 pages)

Edition:

Third edition.

Other Title:

Implementing Splunk seven

Place of Publication:

Birmingham ; Mumbai : Packt, 2018.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

A comprehensive guide to making machine data accessible across the organization using advanced dashboards About This Book Enrich machine-generated data and transform it into useful, meaningful insights Perform search operations and configurations, build dashboards, and manage logs Extend Splunk services with scripts and advanced configurations to process optimal results Who This Book Is For This book is intended for data analysts, business analysts, and IT administrators who want to make the best use of big data, operational intelligence, log management, and monitoring within their organization. Some knowledge of Splunk services will help you get the most out of the book What You Will Learn Focus on the new features of the latest version of Splunk Enterprise 7 Master the new offerings in Splunk: Splunk Cloud and the Machine Learning Toolkit Create efficient and effective searches within the organization Master the use of Splunk tables, charts, and graph enhancements Use Splunk data models and pivots with faster data model acceleration Master all aspects of Splunk XML dashboards with hands-on applications Create and deploy advanced Splunk dashboards to share valuable business insights with peers In Detail Splunk is the leading platform that fosters an efficient methodology and delivers ways to search, monitor, and analyze growing amounts of big data. This book will allow you to implement new services and utilize them to quickly and efficiently process machine-generated big data. We introduce you to all the new features, improvements, and offerings of Splunk 7. We cover the new modules of Splunk: Splunk Cloud and the Machine Learning Toolkit to ease data usage. Furthermore, you will learn to use search terms effectively with Boolean and grouping operators. You will learn not only how to modify your search to make your searches fast but also how to use wildcards efficiently. Later you will learn how to use stats to aggregate values, a chart to turn data, and a time chart to show values over time; you'll also work with fields and chart enhancements and learn how to create a data model with faster data model acceleration. Once this is done, you will learn about XML Dashboards, working with apps, building advanced dashboards, configuring and extending Splunk, advanced deployments, and more. Finally, we teach you how to use the Machine Learning Toolkit and best practices and tips to help you implement Splunk services effectively and efficiently. By t...

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright and Credits

Packt Upsell

Contributors

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: The Splunk Interface

Logging in to Splunk

The home app

The top bar

The Search &amp

Reporting app

Data generator

The Summary view

Search

Actions

Timeline

The field picker

Fields

Search results

Options

Events viewer

Using the time picker

Using the field picker

The settings section

Splunk Cloud

Try before you buy

A quick cloud tour

The top bar in Splunk Cloud

Splunk reference app - PAS

Universal forwarder

eventgen

Next steps

Summary

Chapter 2: Understanding Search

Using search terms effectively

Boolean and grouping operators

Clicking to modify your search

Event segmentation

Field widgets

Time

Using fields to search

Using wildcards efficiently

Supplementing wildcards in fields

All about time

How Splunk parses time

How Splunk stores time

How Splunk displays time

How time zones are determined and why it matters

Different ways to search against time

Presets

Relative

Real-time

Windowed real-time versus all-time real-time searches

Date range

Date and time range

Advanced

Specifying time in-line in your search

_indextime versus _time

Making searches faster

Sharing results with others

The URL

Save As Report

Save As Dashboard Panel

Save As Alert

Save As Event Type

Searching job settings

Saving searches for reuse

Creating alerts from searches

Enable Actions

Action Options

Sharing

Event annotations

An illustration

Chapter 3: Tables, Charts, and Fields

About the pipe symbol

Using top to show common field values

Controlling the output of top

Using stats to aggregate values.

Using chart to turn data

Using timechart to show values over time

The timechart options

Working with fields

A regular expression primer

Commands that create fields

eval

rex

Extracting loglevel

Using the extract fields interface

Using rex to prototype a field

Using the admin interface to build a field

Indexed fields versus extracted fields

Indexed field case 1 - rare instances of a common term

Indexed field case 2 - splitting words

Indexed field case 3 - application from source

Indexed field case 4 - slow requests

Indexed field case 5 - unneeded work

Chart enhancements in version 7.0

charting.lineWidth

charting.data.fieldHideList

charting.legend.mode

charting.fieldDashStyles

charting.axis Y.abbreviation

Chapter 4: Data Models and Pivots

What is a data model?

What does a data model search?

Data model objects

Object constraining

Attributes

Acceleration in version 7.0

Creating a data model

Filling in the new data model dialog

Editing fields (attributes)

Lookup attributes

Children

What is a pivot?

The Pivot Editor

Working with pivot elements

Filtering pivots

Split (row or column)

Column values

Pivot table formatting

A quick example

Sparklines

Chapter 5: Simple XML Dashboards

The purpose of dashboards

Using wizards to build dashboards

Adding another panel

A cool trick

Converting the panel to a report

More options

Back to the dashboard

Add input

Editing source

Edit UI

Editing XML directly

UI examples app

Building forms

Creating a form from a dashboard

Driving multiple panels from one form

Post-processing search results

Post-processing limitations

Features replaced

Autorun dashboard

Scheduling the generation of dashboards

Summary.

Chapter 6: Advanced Search Examples

Using subsearches to find loosely related events

Subsearch

Subsearch caveats

Nested subsearches

Using transaction

Using transaction to determine session length

Calculating the aggregate of transaction statistics

Combining subsearches with transaction

Determining concurrency

Using transaction with concurrency

Using concurrency to estimate server load

Calculating concurrency with a by clause

Calculating events per slice of time

Using timechart

Calculating average requests per minute

Calculating average events per minute, per hour

Rebuilding top

Acceleration

Big data - summary strategy

Report acceleration

Report acceleration availability

Version 7.0 advancements in metrics

Definition of a Splunk metric

Using Splunk metrics

Creating a metrics index

Creating a UDP or TCP data input

Chapter 7: Extending Search

Using tags to simplify search

Using event types to categorize results

Using lookups to enrich data

Defining a lookup table file

Defining a lookup definition

Defining an automatic lookup

Troubleshooting lookups

Using macros to reuse logic

Creating a simple macro

Creating a macro with arguments

Creating workflow actions

Running a new search using values from an event

Linking to an external site

Building a workflow action to show field context

Building the context workflow action

Building the context macro

Using external commands

Extracting values from XML

xmlkv

XPath

Using Google to generate results

Chapter 8: Working with Apps

Defining an app

Included apps

Installing apps

Installing apps from Splunkbase

Using Geo Location Lookup Script

Using Google Maps

Installing apps from a file

Building your first app

Editing navigation.

Customizing the appearance of your app

Customizing the launcher icon

Using custom CSS

Using custom HTML

Custom HTML in a simple dashboard

Using server-side include in a complex dashboard

Object permissions

How permissions affect navigation

How permissions affect other objects

Correcting permission problems

App directory structure

Adding your app to Splunkbase

Preparing your app

Confirming sharing settings

Cleaning up our directories

Packaging your app

Uploading your app

Self-service app management

Chapter 9: Building Advanced Dashboards

Reasons for working with advanced XML

Reasons for not working with advanced XML

Development process

Advanced XML structure

Converting simple XML to advanced XML

Module logic flow

Understanding layoutPanel

Panel placement

Reusing a query

Using intentions

stringreplace

addterm

Creating a custom drilldown

Building a drilldown to a custom query

Building a drilldown to another panel

Building a drilldown to multiple panels using HiddenPostProcess

Third-party add-ons

Google Maps

Sideview Utils

The Sideview search module

Linking views with Sideview

Sideview URLLoader

Sideview forms

Chapter 10: Summary Indexes and CSV Files

Understanding summary indexes

Creating a summary index

When to use a summary index

When to not use a summary index

Populating summary indexes with saved searches

Using summary index events in a query

Using sistats, sitop, and sitimechart

How latency affects summary queries

How and when to backfill summary data

Using fill_summary_index.py to backfill

Using collect to produce custom summary indexes

Reducing summary index size

Using eval and rex to define grouping fields

Using a lookup with wildcards.

Using event types to group results

Calculating top for a large time frame

Summary index searches

Using CSV files to store transient data

Pre-populating a dropdown

Creating a running calculation for a day

Chapter 11: Configuring Splunk

Locating Splunk configuration files

The structure of a Splunk configuration file

The configuration merging logic

The merging order

The merging order outside of search

The merging order when searching

Configuration merging - example 1

Configuration merging - example 2

Configuration merging - example 3

Configuration merging - example 4, search

Using btool

An overview of Splunk.conf files

props.conf

Common attributes

Search-time attributes

Index-time attributes

Parse-time attributes

Input-time attributes

Stanza types

Priorities inside a type

Attributes with class

inputs.conf

Common input attributes

Files as inputs

Using patterns to select rolled logs

Using blacklist and whitelist

Selecting files recursively

Following symbolic links

Setting the value of the host from the source

Ignoring old data at installation

When to use crcSalt

Destructively indexing files

Network inputs

Native Windows inputs

Scripts as inputs

transforms.conf

Creating indexed fields

Creating a loglevel field

Creating a session field from the source

Creating a tag field

Creating host categorization fields

Modifying metadata fields

Overriding the host

Overriding the source

Overriding sourcetype

Routing events to a different index

Lookup definitions

Wildcard lookups

CIDR wildcard lookups

Using time in lookups

Using REPORT

Creating multivalue fields

Creating dynamic fields

Chaining transforms

Dropping events

fields.conf.

outputs.conf.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

OCLC:

1030820508