About Splunk Enterprise

Splunk Enterprise is a software product that enables you to search, analyze, and visualize the data gathered from the components of your IT infrastructure or business. Splunk Enterprise takes in data from websites, applications, sensors, devices, and so on. After you define the data source, Splunk Enterprise indexes the data stream and parses it into a series of individual events that you can view and search.

Most users connect to Splunk Enterprise with a web browser and use Splunk Web to administer their deployment, manage and create knowledge objects, run searches, create pivots and reports, and so on. You can also use the command-line interface to administer your Splunk Enterprise deployment.

You can extend the Splunk Enterprise environment to fit the specific needs of your organization by using apps. An app is a collection of configurations, knowledge objects, views, and dashboards that runs on the Splunk platform. A single Splunk Enterprise installation can run multiple apps simultaneously. Browse available apps on Splunkbase or build your own on the Splunk developer site.

Features of Splunk Enterprise

The following section highlights seven Splunk Enterprise features. You can read about more features on the Splunk Enterprise page at Splunk.com.

Indexing

Splunk Enterprise processes and stores the data that represents your business and its infrastructure. You can collect data from devices and applications such as websites, servers, databases, operating systems, and more. Once the data is collected, the index segments, stores, compresses the data, and maintains the supporting metadata to accelerate searching. To learn about getting your data into Splunk Enterprise, see Get started with getting data in in the Getting Data In manual. For more information on the indexing process, see Indexes, indexers, and indexer clusters in the Managing Indexers and Clusters of Indexers manual.

Search

Search is the primary way users navigate their data in Splunk Enterprise. You can save a search as a report and use it to power dashboard panels. Searches provide insight from your data, such as:

• Retrieving events from an index
• Calculating metrics
• Searching for specific conditions within a rolling time window
• Identifying patterns in your data
• Predicting future trends

Alerts

Alerts notify you when search results for both historical and real-time searches meet configured conditions. You can configure alerts to trigger actions like sending alert information to designated email addresses, posting alert information to an RSS feed, and running a custom script, such as one that posts an alert event to syslog.

Dashboards

Dashboards contain panels of modules like search boxes, fields, charts, and so on. Dashboard panels are usually connected to saved searches or pivots. They display the results of completed searches and data from real-time searches that run in the background.

Pivot

Pivot refers to the table, chart, or data visualization you create using the Pivot Editor. The Pivot Editor lets users map attributes defined by data model objects to a table, chart, or data visualization without having to write the searches in the Search Processing Language (SPL) to generate them. Pivots can be saved as reports and added to dashboards.

Reports

Splunk Enterprise allows you to save searches and pivots as reports, and then add reports to dashboards as dashboard panels. Run reports on an ad hoc basis, schedule them to run on a regular interval, or set a scheduled report to generate alerts when the result meets particular conditions.

Data model

Data models encode specialized domain knowledge about one or more sets of indexed data. They enable Pivot Editor users to create reports and dashboards without designing the searches that generate them.

Download the Splunk Enterprise Quick Reference Guide

The Splunk Enterprise Quick Reference Guide is a PDF reference card that provides information about Splunk Enterprise features, concepts, search commands, and search examples.

For more information and a direct link to the PDF, see Splunk Quick Reference Guide in the Search Reference.