Introducing Splunk - Splunk Essentials - page 1

Chapter 1. Introducing Splunk
Splunk , whose name was inspired by the process of exploring caves, or splunking, helps
analysts, operators, programmers, and many others explore data from their organizations by
obtaining, analyzing, and reporting on it. This multinational company, cofounded by Mi-
chael Baum, Rob Das, and Erik Swan, has a core product called Splunk Enterprise . This
manages searches, inserts, deletes, and filters, and analyzes big data that is generated by
machines, as well as other types of data. They also have a free version that has most of the
capabilities of Splunk Enterprise and is an excellent learning tool.
Note
Throughout the topic, I will be covering the fundamental, bare-bones concepts of Splunk so
you can learn quickly and efficiently. I reserve any deep discussion of concepts to Splunk's
online documentation. Where necessary, I provide links to help provide you with the prac-
tical skills, and examples so you can get started quickly.
To learn Splunk, it is important for you to first understand the following concepts:
• How to install Splunk for different operating systems and use it for the first time
• How Splunk works with big data
• Data sources for Splunk
• Events, event types, and fields in Splunk
• How to add data to Splunk