Splunk SPLK-2002 Exam Dumps

When planning a search head cluster, the following statement is true: All indexers must belong to the underlying indexer cluster (no standalone indexers). A search head cluster is a group of search heads that share configurations, apps, and search jobs. A search head cluster requires an indexer cluster as its data source, meaning that all indexers that provide data to the search head cluster must be members of the same indexer cluster. Standalone indexers, or indexers that are not part of an indexer cluster, cannot be used as data sources for a search head cluster. All search heads do not have to use the same operating system, as long as they are compatible with the Splunk version and the indexer cluster. All search heads do not have to be members of the cluster, as standalone search heads can also search the indexer cluster, but they will not have the benefits of configuration replication and load balancing. The search head captain does not have to be assigned to the largest search head in the cluster, as the captain is dynamically elected from among the cluster members based on various criteria, such as CPU load, network latency, and search load.

According to the Splunk Search Head Clustering Troubleshooting Guide, when a Search Head Cluster (SHC) member is reverted from a backup or experiences configuration drift (e.g., an outdated Raft state), it can fail to rejoin the cluster due to inconsistent Raft metadata. The Raft database stores the SHC's internal consensus and replication state, including knowledge object synchronization, captain election history, and peer membership information.

If this Raft metadata becomes corrupted or outdated (as in the scenario where a node is restored from backup), the recommended and Splunk-supported remediation is to clean the Raft metadata using:

splunk clean raft

This command resets the node's local Raft state so it can re-synchronize with the current SHC captain and rejoin the cluster cleanly.

The steps generally are:

Stop the affected SHC member.

Run splunk clean raft on that node.

Restart Splunk.

Verify that it successfully rejoins the SHC.

Deleting configuration stanzas or forcing re-addition (Options B and C) can lead to further inconsistency or data loss. Reviewing logs (Option A) helps diagnose issues but does not resolve Raft corruption.

Reference (Splunk Enterprise Documentation):

* Troubleshooting Raft Metadata Corruption in Search Head Clusters

* splunk clean raft Command Reference

* Search Head Clustering: Recovering from Backup and Membership Failures

* Splunk Enterprise Admin Manual -- Raft Consensus and SHC Maintenance

A single-site indexer cluster is a group of Splunk Enterprise instances that index and replicate data across the cluster1.A bucket is a directory that contains indexed data, along with metadata and other information2.A replication factor is the number of copies of each bucket that the cluster maintains1.A search factor is the number of searchable copies of each bucket that the cluster maintains1.A searchable copy is a copy that contains both the raw data and the index files3.A search head is a Splunk Enterprise instance that coordinates the search activities across the peer nodes1.

Option D is the correct answer because it reflects the definitions of replication factor and search factor. The cluster will ensure that there are at least three copies of each bucket, one on each peer node, to satisfy the replication factor of 3. The cluster will also ensure that there are at least two searchable copies of each bucket, one primary and one searchable, to satisfy the search factor of 2.The primary copy is the one that the search head uses to run searches, and the searchable copy is the one that can be promoted to primary if the original primary copy becomes unavailable3.

Option A is incorrect because it confuses the replication factor and the search factor. The cluster will ensure there are at least three copies of each bucket, not two, to meet the replication factor of 3. The cluster will ensure there are at least two copies of searchable metadata, not three, to meet the search factor of 2.

Option B is incorrect because it uses the wrong terms. The cluster will ensure there are at least, not at most, three copies of each bucket, to meet the replication factor of 3. The cluster will ensure there are at least, not at most, two copies of searchable metadata, to meet the search factor of 2.

Option C is incorrect because it has nothing to do with the replication factor or the search factor. The cluster does not limit the number of search heads that can access the bucket at the same time.The search head can search across multiple clusters, and the cluster can serve multiple search heads1.

1:The basics of indexer cluster architecture - Splunk Documentation2:About buckets - Splunk Documentation3:Search factor - Splunk Documentation

Changing the limits.conf value for max_searches_per_cpu to a higher value is the best option to increase scheduled search capacity on the search head cluster when a large number of searches are skipped across time. This value determines how many concurrent scheduled searches can run on each CPU core of the search head. Increasing this value will allow more scheduled searches to run at the same time, which will reduce the number of skipped searches. Creating a job server on the cluster, running the server.conf captain_is_adhoc_searchhead = true command, or adding another search head to the cluster are not the best options to increase scheduled search capacity on the search head cluster. For more information, see [Configure limits.conf] in the Splunk documentation.

As a best practice, the internal licensing logs should be stored on the license server. The license server is a Splunk instance that manages the distribution and enforcement of licenses in a Splunk deployment. The license server generates internal licensing logs that contain information about the license usage, violations, warnings, and pools. The internal licensing logs should be stored on the license server itself, because they are relevant to the license server's role and function. Storing the internal licensing logs on the license server also simplifies the license monitoring and troubleshooting process. The internal licensing logs should not be stored on the indexing layer, the deployment layer, or the search head layer, because they are not related to the roles and functions of these layers.Storing the internal licensing logs on these layers would also increase the network traffic and disk space consumption