Splunk® Enterprise Security

Install and Upgrade Splunk Enterprise Security

Performance reference for Splunk Enterprise Security

Review the following guidelines to optimize the performance of Splunk Enterprise Security prior to deploying the app on a configured Splunk platform installation:

Performance test results

Review the following performance test results to estimate the performance you can expect from your infrastructure based on the mix of data in your Splunk platform and Splunk Enterprise Security deployment. The indexers used for these performance tests match the reference hardware with 32 GB of RAM and 16 CPU cores. Additionally, you must have a 64-bit operating system on all search heads and indexers to install Splunk Enterprise Security.

Performance criteria Small deployment
Data ingestion 300 GB per day
Number of indexers 3
Number of detections enabled 20

Guidelines to optimize performance

Capacity planning is challenging due to the complexity of use cases, the data, and the architecture possibilities. Every situation is unique.

The following table highlights some best practices when planning to deploy Splunk Enterprise Security:

Capacity planning criteria Installation best practice
Dedicated search head or search head cluster Install Splunk Enterprise Security on a dedicated search head or a dedicated search head cluster.
Common Information Model add-on Install only Common Information Model (CIM)-compatible apps or add-ons on the same search head as Splunk Enterprise Security.
For example, you can install both the Splunk App for PCI Compliance and the Splunk Add-on Builder on the same search head as Splunk Enterprise Security.
Real time searches All real-time searches in Splunk Enterprise Security use the indexed real-time setting to improve indexing performance.
Deactivating the indexed real-time search setting reduces the overall indexing capacity of your indexers.
To review the performance implications of the types of real-time searches, see Known limitations of real-time searches in the Search Manual.
Increase indexer capacity Search head clusters increase the search load on indexers. Add more indexers or allocate more CPU cores to the indexers when implementing a search head cluster.
See System requirements and other deployment considerations for search head clusters and Search head clustering architecture in the Splunk Enterprise Distributed Search Manual.

Constraints impacting performance

The following table describes the sizing constraints when deploying Splunk Enterprise Security:

Sizing criteria Constraint
Detection search load Based on the number of detections and supporting searches enabled in your deployment.
Data ingestion volume Based on the volume of data being ingested into Splunk Enterprise Security
Data model acceleration load Based on the number of data models being accelerated, the type of data being modeled, the cardinality of the data being modeled, and the volume of data being accelerated.
Indexer cluster support Based on single-site or multi-site indexer clusters
Retention policy Based on the index's time series index files (TSIDX)

Constraints on search load

As high-volume Splunk Enterprise Security deployments run high numbers of searches that generate large amounts of results, the amount of work each peer must do can also exceed that of a smaller deployment. As a result, you must monitor and adjust memory consumption and run times of search jobs for safe levels.

Follow these best practices:

  • Pay careful attention to the styles and types of searches that are allowed to run on high volume Splunk Enterprise Security deployments.
  • Enforce quality standards against the types of search processing language (SPL) commands, time frames, and intervals used for scheduled searches in Splunk Enterprise Security.

Constraints on data ingestion

When scaling Splunk Enterprise with Splunk Enterprise Security to data volumes exceeding 15 TB, some of the configurations that usually work in a Splunk Enterprise deployment will no longer work in a Splunk Enterprise deployment with Splunk Enterprise Security. The data model acceleration searches included with Splunk Enterprise Security impact overall cluster performance. Work with your Splunk field architect to calculate and validate large data volumes during deployment planning.

Constraints on data model acceleration

Depending on the data mix, the ingest volume, and the searches enabled, data model accelerations can lag behind the data ingestion.

Splunk Enterprise Security accelerates data models to provide dashboard, panel, and detection results. Data model acceleration uses the indexers for processing and storage, storing the accelerated data in each index.

Limit data model acceleration for specific data models to specific indexes to improve performance of data model acceleration and reduce indexer load, especially at scale. See Set up the Splunk Common Information Model Add-on for more on restricting data models to specific indexes.

See Data model acceleration storage and retention to calculate the additional storage for data model acceleration.

Constraints on retention policy for time series index

A retention policy for an index's time series index files (TSIDX) is available in Splunk Enterprise 6.4.x. For more information, see Reduce tsidx disk usage in the Splunk Enterprise Managing Indexers and Clusters of Indexers manual. Setting a retention policy for the TSIDX files does not affect the retention of data model accelerations.

Some searches provided with Enterprise Security do not work on buckets with reduced TSIDX files.

The following table provides guidelines on configuring the TSIDX retention value based on the panel or search name:

Panel or search name Default time range Workaround
Forwarder Audit panel: Event Count Over Time by Host -30d Set the TSIDX retention to a value greater than the time range.
Saved Search: Audit - Event Count Over Time By Top 10 Hosts -30d Set the TSIDX retention to a value greater than the time range.
Saved Search: Audit - Events Per Day - Lookup Gen -1d Set the TSIDX retention to a value greater than the default time range.
Saved Search: Endpoint - Index Time Delta 2 - Summary Gen -1d Set the TSIDX retention to a value greater than the default time range.

Constraints on type of indexer cluster

Splunk Enterprise Security supports both single site and multisite indexer cluster architectures. See The basics of indexer cluster architecture and Multisite indexer cluster architecture in Managing Indexers and Clusters of Indexers.

A single site or multisite indexer cluster architecture can have one search head or one search head cluster with a running instance of Enterprise Security. Additional single instance search heads or additional search head clusters cannot run Enterprise Security.

For a multisite indexer cluster architecture, follow these best practices:

  • Enable summary replication. See Replicated summaries in Managing Indexers and Clusters of Indexers.
  • Set the Enterprise Security search head to site0 to turn off search affinity. See Turn off search affinity in Managing Indexers and Clusters of Indexers.

If you use indexer clustering, the method you use to deploy apps and configuration files to indexer peers is different. See Manage common configurations across all peers and Manage app deployment across all peers in the Managing Indexers and Clusters of Indexers.

Performance considerations when working with another Splunk product or app

Consider the following when using Splunk Enterprise Security with Splunk apps or add-ons:

Managing apps or add-ons with the deployment server

Splunk Enterprise Security includes apps and add-ons. If the deployment server manages those apps or add-ons, Enterprise Security will not finish installing unless the following conditions are met:

  • For add-ons included with Splunk Enterprise Security, deploy them using the Distributed Configuration Management tool. See Deploy add-ons to Splunk Enterprise Security.
  • For other apps and add-ons installed in your environment, deploy them with the deployment server if appropriate. See About deployment server and forwarder management in Updating Splunk Enterprise Instances.
  • For add-ons included with Splunk Enterprise Security and managed by a deployment server, remove the deployment client configuration before installing Enterprise Security. Remove the deploymentclient.conf file containing references to the deployment server and restart Splunk.

Support for app import and export

Splunk Enterprise Security does not selectively import apps and add-ons based on the name of the app or add-on. Knowledge objects in apps and add-ons that are installed on the same search head as Splunk Enterprise Security and exported to other apps or globally are visible in Splunk Enterprise Security.

To verify a global export from the search head, check the local.meta file of the app or add-on for export = system. For more information on making Splunk knowledge objects globally available, see App architecture and object ownership in the Splunk Enterprise Admin Manual.

Compatibility of Splunk Enterprise Security with other apps

Splunk Enterprise Security relies on the search knowledge and CIM support supplied by add-ons. The add-ons are responsible for defining the event processing necessary to optimize, normalize, and categorize security data for use with the CIM. Only CIM-compatible apps are compatible with Splunk Enterprise Security. Other apps and add-ons that are not CIM-compatible can include data knowledge that is not normalized for the CIM, preventing searches and dashboards that rely on those fields from functioning properly.

Only install apps and add-ons on the same search head with Enterprise Security if they meet one of the following guidelines:

  • Add-ons that are CIM-compatible and enrich data for use with Enterprise Security.
  • Apps whose primary purpose is to integrate with Splunk Enterprise Security.

You can't install Splunk Enterprise Security and the SA-VMNetAppUtils component of the Splunk Add-on for VMware on the same search head. Conflicts with identically-named files can prevent some parts of Splunk Enterprise Security from working correctly.

Mode of Monitoring Console

If you enable the Monitoring Console on a Splunk Enterprise Security search head, it must remain in standalone mode. For more on when and how to configure the Monitoring Console in a distributed environment, see Which instance should host the console? in Monitoring Splunk Enterprise.

See also

For more information on deployment planning, installation, and upgrading, see the product documentation:

Last modified on 25 October, 2024
Considerations for scaling deployments   Data source planning for Splunk Enterprise Security

This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Enterprise Security: 8.0.0, 8.0.1

Acrobat logo Download manual
Acrobat logo Download this page

Was this topic useful?







You must be logged into splunk.com in order to post comments. Log in now.

Please try to keep this discussion focused on the content covered in this documentation topic. If you have a more general question about Splunk functionality or are experiencing a difficulty with Splunk, consider posting a question to Splunkbase Answers.

0 out of 1000 Characters