Getting Started

with Splunk

Name
Title
Date
Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. Listen to your data.
 Agenda
• Getting Started (5 minutes)
• Splunk at <Your Company> (5-10 minutes)
• Orientation (15-20 minutes)
• Getting Help (5-10 minutes)
• Q & A (10-15 minutes)

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 2 Listen to your data.

 Introductions
Who are you?
What is your role?
– Where does your job start and end?
Who’s in the audience?
– Have the audience introduce themselves?
– How much experience do they have with Splunk?
– What do they hope to gain from the workshop?

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 3 Listen to your data.

 Getting Started
How to access Splunk?
– <Splunk URL>
– <Credentials: LDAP or other?>
How to request access?
– What is the new user onboarding process?
– You have a process, right? ;)
What data is currently collected and available?
– What is the new data onboarding process?
– Please say you have a process

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 4 Listen to your data.

 Splunk Environment
How is Splunk deployed?
– Present a diagram of your Splunk deployment (example on next slide)
Splunk can be downloaded free and sets up in <5 minutes
– Free version can be used as sandboxes to learn Splunk or test new
configuration
– Free version for home/personal use

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 <Your Company> Splunk Architecture
License Capacity: 500 GB/day
Distributed Search and
Summary Indexing Tier

Indexing Tier
… x5

Forwarders or
Forwarding Tier

Data Sources

desktops laptops servers/VMs proxy applications syslog firewall config

6
Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. Listen to your data.
 <Your Company> Use Cases
Who is using Splunk (individual users or teams)?
What are they doing with Splunk?
Highlight success stories, cool challenges solved or interesting
questions answered by Splunk.
Example: our CIO is able to track productivity using Splunk
dashboards of web proxy data.
Poll the audience for their use cases.

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 7 Listen to your data.

 Orientation
Provide a walk through of the Splunk UI
– Show the Launcher
– Show the Getting Started App
– Show the Search App
 cover the data (sourcetypes, hosts, sources)
 run a simple search with wildcards/booleans
 explain the timeline, search controls, filters
 explain the time range picker (historic vs. real-time searches)
 find the search in the Jobs manager
 introduce search commands
 explain fields and/or demo the interactive field extractor
 show how to save and schedule searches
 build a simple report
 make a simple dashboard
– Ask the audience for search ideas or questions they want answered
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 Orientation
Mention the existence of the CLI and REST APIs
Show other cool Apps
– Show Apps you have installed
– Example: use the GoogleMaps App to geolocate events
– Download more from SplunkBase
– Users can also build their own

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 Getting Help
Is there an internal wiki or website with more information?
Is there an internal mailing list users can ping?
Is there an internal chat list?
Are there team experts who can be leveraged?

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 10 Listen to your data.

 Technical Help: Splunk Answers
http://answers.splunk.com
Community driven
Splunk supported
Knowledge exchange
Q&A

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 11 Listen to your data.

 Technical Help: Splunk Documentation
http://docs.splunk.com
Official Product Docs
Wiki and community topics
Updated daily
Can be printed to .PDF

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 12 Listen to your data.

 Splunk Education
Develop internal Splunk experts
Recommended for New Users
– Using Splunk
– Searching & Reporting
Recommended for Admins
– Administering
– Deploying Splunk
Recommended for UI/Dashboard Developers
– Developing Apps

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 13 Listen to your data.

 Splunk Events
Splunk User Groups
– Community driven
–
–
Bootstrapped by Splunk www.splunk.com > Events
Occur every 2-3 months
– Hosted locally

Splunk Live!
– Worldwide customer events
– Technical workshops for beginners and power users
– Local Events held in LA, OC, San Diego, Phoenix yearly

Splunk User Conference

– August 15-17 in San Francisco, CA
– 5 tracks, more than 40 sessions, the smartest Splunk users together
– May 13th early registration promotion

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 Other Ways to Get Help
Post a Question to Splunk Answers

Find an app on Splunkbase

Join the IRC channel #splunk on efnet

Join the Splunk LinkedIn Group

Follow @Splunk on Twitter

Watch Splunk Videos on YouTube

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 15 Listen to your data.

 Q&A
Questions?
Looking Ahead
– Was the workshop useful?
– Get ideas for future workshops
– Recruit someone in the audience to host a future workshop
– Consider hosting a Search/Story of the Month contest

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. 16 Listen to your data.

 Thank You :)

Copyright © 2011, Splunk Inc. Listen to your data.