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Splunk Validated Architectures

October 2020
 Splunk Validated Architectures

Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 2
Document Structure .......................................................................................................................................................................2
Reasons to Use Splunk Validated Architectures ...........................................................................................................................3
Pillars of Splunk Validated Architectures .......................................................................................................................................3
What to Expect From Splunk Validated Architectures ...................................................................................................................4
Roles and Responsibilities .............................................................................................................................................................4
Available Indexing and Search Topologies ........................................................................................................... 5
Splunk Cloud Deployment Architecture (CLOUD) .........................................................................................................................6
Single Server Deployment (S1) .....................................................................................................................................................8
Distributed Non-Clustered Deployment (D1 / D11) ........................................................................................................................9
Distributed Clustered Deployment - Single Site (C1 / C11) .........................................................................................................11
Distributed Clustered Deployment + SHC - Single Site (C3 / C13) .............................................................................................13
Distributed Clustered Deployment - Multi-Site (M2 / M12)...........................................................................................................15
Distributed Clustered Deployment + SHC - Multi-Site (M3 / M13) ...............................................................................................17
Distributed Clustered Deployment + SHC - Multi-Site (M4 / M14) ...............................................................................................19
Splunk Indexer Architecture Options ...........................................................................................................................................21
Classic Indexer Architecture Using File System Storage.............................................................................................................21
SmartStore Indexer Architecture Using Object Storage ..............................................................................................................22
Data Collection Architecture ........................................................................................................................................................23
Important Architectural Considerations and Why They Matter ....................................................................................................23
General Data Collection Architecture Guidance ..........................................................................................................................24
Data Collection Topology Overview .............................................................................................................................................25
Data Collection Components ................................................................................................................................ 26
(UF) Universal Forwarder ............................................................................................................................................................26
(HF) Heavy Forwarder .................................................................................................................................................................26
(HEC) HTTP Event Collector .......................................................................................................................................................27
(DCN) Heavy Forwarder as Data Collection Node ......................................................................................................................29
(IF) Intermediary Forwarding Tier ................................................................................................................................................30
(KAFKA) Consuming Log Data From Kafka Topics .....................................................................................................................32
(KINESIS) Consuming Log Data From Amazon Kinesis Firehose ..............................................................................................33
(METRICS) Metrics Collection .....................................................................................................................................................34
(SYSLOG) Syslog Data Collection...............................................................................................................................................35
Splunk Connect for Syslog (SC4S - recommended best practice) ..............................................................................................35
Syslog (File monitoring in conjunction with a syslog server)........................................................................................................37
Splunk UDP Input ........................................................................................................................................................................38
High-Availability Considerations for Forwarding Tier components ..............................................................................................38
Design Principles and Best Practices .................................................................................................................. 39
Deployment Tiers .........................................................................................................................................................................39
Aligning Your Topology With Best Practices................................................................................................................................39
Best Practices: Tier-Specific Recommendations .........................................................................................................................39
Search Tier Recommendations ...................................................................................................................................................40
Indexing Tier Recommendations .................................................................................................................................................41
Collection Tier Recommendations ...............................................................................................................................................42
Management / Utility Tier Recommendations ..............................................................................................................................43
Summary & Next Steps .......................................................................................................................................... 44
Appendix ................................................................................................................................................................. 45
Appendix "A": SVA Pillars Explained ...........................................................................................................................................45
Appendix "B": Topology Components ..........................................................................................................................................46

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Introduction
Splunk Validated Architectures (SVAs) are proven reference architectures for stable, efficient and repeatable
Splunk deployments. Many of Splunk's existing customers have experienced rapid adoption and expansion,
leading to certain challenges as they attempt to scale. At the same time, new Splunk customers are increasingly
looking for guidelines and certified architectures to ensure that their initial deployment is built on a solid
foundation. SVAs have been developed to help our customers with these growing needs.
Whether you are a new or existing Splunk customer, SVAs will help you build an environment that is easier to
maintain and simpler to troubleshoot. SVAs are designed to provide you with the best possible results while
minimizing your total cost of ownership. Additionally, your entire Splunk foundation will be based on a repeatable
architecture which will allow you to scale your deployment as your needs evolve over time.
SVAs offer topology options that consider a wide array of organizational requirements, so you can easily
understand and find a topology that is right for your requirements. The Splunk Validated Architectures selection
process will help you match your specific requirements to the topology that best meets your organization's needs.
If you are new to Splunk, we recommend implementing a Validated Architecture for your initial deployment. If you
are an existing customer, we recommend that you explore the option of aligning with a Validated Architecture
topology. Unless you have unique requirements that make it necessary to build a custom architecture, it is very
likely that a Validated Architecture will fulfill your requirements while remaining cost effective.

This document contains all SVA topologies that are available at time of publication. For a custom
document that meets your specific requirements, please use the Interactive Splunk Validated
Architecture (iSVA) tool available here. The custom document will reflect the best practice approach
to search, indexing and data collection architecture, given your specific requirements identified when
working with the tool.

It is always recommended that you involve Splunk or a trusted Splunk partner to ensure that the
recommendations in this document meet your needs.
If you need assistance implementing a Splunk Validated Architecture, contact Splunk Professional Services.

Document Structure
SVAs are broken into three major content areas:
1. Indexing and search topology
2. Data collection architecture components
3. Design principles and best practices
Indexing and search covers the architecture tiers that provide the core indexing and search capabilities of a
Splunk deployment. The data collection component section guides you in choosing the right data collection
mechanism for your requirements.
Design principles and best practices apply to your architecture as a whole and will help you make the correct
choices when working out the details of your deployment.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Reasons to Use Splunk Validated Architectures

Implementing a validated architecture will empower you to design and deploy Splunk more confidently. SVAs will
help you solve some of the most common challenges that organizations face, including:
Performance
• Organizations want to see improvements in performance and stability
Complexity
• Organizations sometimes run into the pitfalls of custom-built deployments, especially when they have grown
too rapidly or organically. In such cases, unnecessary complexity may have been introduced into the
environment. This complexity can become a serious barrier when attempting to scale
Efficiency
• To derive the maximum benefits from the Splunk deployment, organizations must improve the efficiency of
operations and accelerate time to value
Cost
• Organizations are seeking ways to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), while fulfilling all of their
requirements
Agility
• Organizations will need to adapt to change as they scale and grow
Maintenance
• Optimization of the environment is often necessary in order to reduce maintenance efforts
Scalability
• Organizations must have the ability to scale efficiently and seamlessly
Verification
• Stakeholders within the organization want the assurance that their Splunk deployment is built on best practice

Pillars of Splunk Validated Architectures

Splunk Validated Architectures are built on the following foundational pillars. For more information on these
design pillars, refer to Appendix "A" below.

AVAILABILITY PERFORMANCE SCALABILITY SECURITY MANAGEABILITY

The system is The system can The system is The system is The system is centrally
continuously maintain an optimal designed to scale on designed to protect operable and
operational and able level of service under all tiers, allowing you data, configurations, manageable across all
to recover from planned varying usage patterns. to handle increased and assets while tiers.
and unplanned outages workloads continuing to deliver
or disruptions. effectively . value.

These pillars are in direct support of the Platform Management & Support Service in the Splunk Center Of
Excellence model.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

What to Expect From Splunk Validated Architectures

Please note that SVAs do not include deployment technologies or deployment sizing. The reasoning for this is as
follows:
• Deployment technologies, such as operating systems and server hardware, are considered implementation
choices in the context of SVAs. Different customers will have different choices, so a generalization is not
easily possible.
• Deployment sizing requires an evaluation of data ingest volume, data types, search volumes and search use
cases, which tend to be very customer-specific and generally have no bearing on the fundamental
deployment topology. When you are ready, please reach out to Splunk for help with properly sizing your
deployment based on your expected ingest and search workload profile.

Summary of Current SVA Guidance:

SVAs will provide: SVAs do not currently provide:

Clustered and non-clustered deployment Implementation choices (OS, baremetal vs. virtual vs. Cloud etc.).
options.
Deployment sizing.
Diagrams of the reference architecture.
A prescriptive approval of your architecture. Note: SVAs provide
Guidelines to help you select the architecture recommendations and guidelines, so you can ultimately make the
that is right for you right decision for your organization.

Tier-specific recommendations. A topology suggestion for every possible deployment scenario. In

some cases, unique factors may require a custom architecture to be
Best practices for building out your Splunk developed. Splunk experts are available to help with any custom
deployment solutions you need. If you are an existing customer, reach out to
your Splunk Account Team. If you are new to Splunk, you can reach
Best practices for connecting to Splunk us here.
Cloud

Roles and Responsibilities

Splunk Validated Architectures are highly relevant to the concerns of decision makers and administrators.
Enterprise architects, consultants, Splunk administrators and managed service providers should all be involved in
the SVA selection process. You will find a description of each of these roles below:

Role Description

Enterprise Architects Responsible for architecting Splunk deployments to meet enterprise needs.

Consultants Responsible for providing services for Splunk architecture, design, and
implementation.

Splunk Engineers Responsible for managing the Splunk lifecycle.

Managed Service Entities that deploy and run Splunk as a service for customers.
Providers

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Available Indexing and Search Topologies

Note
If you chose Splunk Cloud to run indexing and search, the topology for these tiers is chosen by Splunk based on
your licensing agreement. You can jump directly to the section on Data Collection components in this document,
which you will still need to consider for getting data into Splunk Cloud.
Note
While you may choose to implement any topology that provides additional benefits beyond your immediate needs,
keep in mind that this will likely result in unnecessary costs. Moreover, the introduction of additional complexity is
often counterproductive to operational efficiency.
Important note about topology diagrams
The icons in the topology diagrams represent functional Splunk roles and do not imply dedicated infrastructure
to run them. Please see the appendix for guidance as to which Splunk roles can be co-located on the same
infrastructure/server.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Splunk Cloud Deployment Architecture (CLOUD)

The following diagram represents the high-level architecture of a Splunk Cloud deployment and shows the
integration points with your environment:

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Description of the Splunk Cloud Deployment Limitations

(CLOUD)

When you are chosing Splunk Cloud, all deployment All apps need to be vetted and certified by
decisions regarding your indexing and search Splunk to ensure security of your environment.
topologies have already been made for you. The At the time of this writing, 900+ apps available
Splunk Cloud team will build and operate your on Splunkbase have been vetted and are
dedicated (single-tenant) AWS environment in a way Splunk Cloud Certified.
that allows for meeting Splunk's compliance
Hybrid Search support is limited to an on-prem
requirements and our service SLAs with you.
Search Head searching Splunk Cloud indexers,
The indexers that support your cloud environment are not vice versa.
distributed across multiple fault domains to ensure a
The IDM (Inputs Data Manager) shown in the
highly available service within a single region (for a list of
diagram is the Splunk Cloud-managed
supported regions, refer to the Splunk Cloud
implementation of a Data Collection Node
documentation).
(DCN) that supports scripted and modular
Besides listening on the standard TCP port (9997) for inputs only. For data collection needs beyond
forwarder traffic, you can also send data via the HTTP that, you can deploy and manage a DCN in
Event Collector (HEC, see details on HEC in the data your environment using a Splunk Heavy
collection section of this document). You may also Forwarder.
request access to the REST API endpoints via port 8089
Splunk Cloud will not manage or monitor your
via a support ticket to support programmatic access.
on-prem Splunk components.
The search head(s) are deployed into their own
security group. Depending on your Splunk Cloud
service agreement, that will either be a single search
head or a search head cluster.
If you license a premium app (like the Splunk App for
Enterprise Security [ES]), Splunk Cloud will provision a
dedicated search head as appropriate to meet the
premium app's requirements. If you intend to run ES, you
can forward adaptive response actions to your on- prem
environment using the Adaptive Response Relay as
described here.
All aspects of operating and managing this AWS
environment are the responsibility of the Splunk Cloud
Operations team, so you can focus on onboarding data
and getting value out of your Splunk deployment.
Data archiving and restoring is supported.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Single Server Deployment (S1)

Description of the Single Server Deployment (S1) Limitations

This deployment topology provides you with a very cost- • No High Availability for Search/Indexing
effective solution if your environment meets all of the
following criteria: • Scalability limited by hardware capacity
(straightforward migration path to a
a) You do not have any requirements to provide high- distributed deployment)
availability or automatic disaster recovery for your
Splunk deployment
b) Your daily data ingest is under ~300GB/day and
c) You have a small number of users with non-critical
search use cases
This topology is typically used for smaller, non business-
critical use-cases (often departmental in nature).
Appropriate use cases include data onboarding test
environments, small DevOps use cases, application test
and integration environments and similar scenarios.
The primary benefits of this topology include easy
manageability, good search performance for smaller
data volumes and a fixed TCO.
Multiple independent single-instance deployments can
be managed by a single management tier, as needed.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Distributed Non-Clustered Deployment (D1 / D11)

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Description of the Distributed Non-Clustered Limitations

Deployment (D1 / D11)

You require a distributed topology in either of the following • No High Availability for Search Tier
situations:
• Limited High Availability for indexing tier,
a) Your daily data volume to be sent to Splunk exceeds node failure may cause incomplete search
the capacity of a single-server deployment or results for historic searches, but will not
b) You want/need to provide highly available data ingest impact data ingest.

Deploying multiple, independent indexers will allow you to

scale your indexing capacity linearly and implicitly
increase the availability for data ingest.
The TCO will increase predictably and linearly as you add
indexer nodes. The recommended introduction of the
Monitoring Console (MC) component allows you to
monitor the health and capacity of your distributed
deployment. Additionally, the MC provides a centralized
alerting system so you will be notified of unhealthy
conditions in your deployment.
The search head(s) will need to be explicitly configured
with the list of available search peers every time new
indexers are added.
Note for ES Customers: If your category code is D11
(i.e. you intend to deploy the Splunk App for Enterprise
Security), a single dedicated search head is required to
deploy the app (this is not pictured in the topology
diagram).
The collection tier needs to be configured with the list of
target indexers (via a deployment server) every time new
indexers are added.
This deployment topology can scale linearly to over 1000
indexer nodes and can thus support extremely high data
ingest and search volumes.
Search performance can be maintained across large
datasets through parallel search execution across many
indexers (map/reduce).
While not specifically broken out as a separate topology, a
search head cluster can be used to increase search
capacity on the search tier.
Depending on specific requirements for total search
capacity and/or premium apps, multiple standalone
Search Heads or a Search Head Cluster can be
configured and managed centrally.

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Distributed Clustered Deployment - Single Site (C1 / C11)

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Description of Distributed Clustered Deployment - Limitations

Single Site (C1 / C11)

This topology introduces indexer clustering in conjunction • No High Availability for Search Tier
with an appropriately configured data replication policy.
This provides high-availability of data in case of indexer • Total number of unique buckets in indexer
peer node failure. However, you should be aware that this cluster limited to 20MM (V8.x), 40MM total
applies only to the indexing tier and does not protect buckets
against search head failure. Multiple independent search • No automatic DR capability in case of data
heads can be used for availability/capacity reasons or to center outage
run Splunk premium app solutions, like ES, although the
recommended approach to scale search capacity is to
employ Search Head Clustering.
Note for ES customers: If your category code is C11 (i.e.
you intend to deploy the Splunk App for Enterprise
Security), a single dedicated search head is required to
deploy the app (this is not pictured in the topology
diagram).
This topology requires an additional Splunk component
named the Cluster Manager (CM). The CM is responsible
for coordination and enforcement of the configured data
replication policy. The CM also serves as the authoritative
source for available cluster peers (indexers). Search Head
configuration is simplified by configuring the CM instead of
individual search peers.
You can optionally configure the forwarding tier to
discover available indexers via the CM. This simplifies the
management of the forwarding tier.
Be aware that data is replicated within the cluster in a non-
deterministic way. You will not have control over where
requested copies of each event are stored.
Additionally, while scalability is linear, there are limitations
with respect to total cluster size (~50PB of searchable
data under ideal conditions).
Splunk recommends deployment of the Monitoring
Console (MC) to monitor the health of your Splunk
environment.

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Distributed Clustered Deployment + SHC - Single Site (C3 / C13)

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Description of Distributed Clustered Limitations

Deployment + SHC - Single Site (C3 / C13)

Search Head Clustering (SHC) adds horizontal • No DR capability in case of data center outage
scalability and removes the single point of failure ES requires dedicated SH/SHC
from the search tier. A minimum of three search
heads are required to implement a SHC. • Professional services recommended for
implementing ES on a SHC
To manage the SHC configuration, an additional
Splunk component called the Search Head Cluster • SHC cannot have more than 100 nodes
Deployer is required for each SHC. This
component is necessary in order to deploy changes
to configuration files in the cluster. The Search
Head Cluster Deployer has no HA requirements
(no runtime role).
The SHC provides the mechanism to increase
available search capacity beyond what a single
search head can provide. Additionally, the SHC
allows for scheduled search workload distribution
across the cluster. The SHC also provides optimal
user failover in case of a search head failure.
A network load-balancer that supports sticky
sessions is required in front of the SHC members
to ensure proper load balancing of users across the
cluster.
Note for ES customers: If your category code is
C13 (i.e. you intend to deploy the Splunk App for
Enterprise Security), a dedicated search head
cluster is required to deploy the app (this is not
pictured in the topology diagram). The search tier
can contain clustered and non-clustered Search
Heads depending on your capacity and
organizational needs (this is also not pictured in the
topology diagram).

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Distributed Clustered Deployment - Multi-Site (M2 / M12)

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Description of Distributed Clustered Limitations

Deployment - Multi-Site (M2 / M12)

To provide near-automatic disaster recovery in case • No sharing of available Search Head capacity
of a catastrophic event (like a data center outage), and no search artifact replication across sites
multi- site clustering is the deployment architecture
of choice. A healthy multi-site cluster requires • Failure of Management functions need to be
acceptable inter-site network latency as specified in handled outside of Splunk in case of site failure
the Splunk documentation. • Cross-site latency for index replication must be
This topology allows you to deterministically within recommended limits
replicate data to two or more groups (=sites) of
indexer cluster peers by configuring the site
replication and search factor. This site-replication
factor allows you to specify where replica copies
are being sent to and ensures data is distributed
across multiple failure domains.
A multi-site cluster is still managed by a single
cluster manager, which has to be failed over to the
DR site in case of a disaster.
Multi-site clustering provides data redundancy
across physically separated distributed locations,
with the possibility for geographically separated
distribution (subject to limits mentioned above).
Available search peer (indexer) capacity across
sites can be utilized for search execution in an
active/active model. Site-affinity can be configured
to ensure that users logged on to a specific site's
search head(s) will only search local indexers.
Note for ES customers: If your category code is
M12 (i.e. you intend to deploy the Splunk App for
Enterprise Security), a single dedicated search
head is required to deploy the app (this is not
pictured in the topology diagram). For the ES
search head, failover involves setting up a
"shadow" search head in the failover site that is
only activated and used in a DR situation.
Please engage Splunk Professional Services to
design and implement a site failover mechanism for
your Enterprise Security deployment.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Distributed Clustered Deployment + SHC - Multi-Site (M3 / M13)

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Description of Distributed Clustered Limitations

Deployment + SHC - Multi-Site (M3 / M13)

This topology utilizes a search head cluster to add • No search artifact replication across sites,
horizontal scalability and removes the single point SHCs are standalone
of failure from the search tier in each site. A
minimum of three search heads are required to • Cross-site latency for index replication must be
implement a SHC (per site). within documented limits

One or more independent SHCs can be deployed • A single SHC cannot contain more than 100
to meet specific requirements, for example to run nodes
some of Splunk's premium apps that require
dedicated search environments.
To manage the SHC configuration, an additional
Splunk component called the Search Head Cluster
Deployer is required for each SHC. This
component is necessary in order to deploy changes
to configuration files in the cluster. The Search
Head Cluster Deployer has no HA requirements
(no runtime role).
The SHC provides the following benefits:
a) Increased available search capacity beyond
what a single search head can provide
b) Scheduled search workload distribution across
the cluster and
c) Optimal user failover in case of a search head
failure
A network load-balancer that supports sticky
sessions is required in front of the SHC members in
each site to ensure proper load balancing of users
across the cluster.
Note for ES customers: If your category code is
M13 (i.e. you intend to deploy the Splunk App for
Enterprise Security), a single dedicated search
head cluster contained within a site is required to
deploy the app (this is not explicitly pictured in the
topology diagram). To be able to recover an ES SH
environment from a site failure, 3rd party
technology can be used to perform a failover of the
search head instances or a "warm standby" ES SH
can be provisioned and kept in synch with the
primary ES environment. It is strongly
recommended to engage with Splunk Professional
Services when deploying ES in a HA/DR
environment.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Distributed Clustered Deployment + SHC - Multi-Site (M4 / M14)

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Description of Distributed Clustered Deployment + Limitations

SHC - Multi-Site (M4 / M14)
This is the most complex validated architecture, • Network latency across sites must
designed for deployments that have strict requirements be within documented limits
around high-availability and disaster recovery. We • Failover of the SHC may require
strongly recommend involving Splunk Professional manual steps if only a minority of
Services to implement this kind of deployment. When cluster members survive
properly deployed, this topology provides continuous
operation of your Splunk infrastructure for data
collection, indexing and search.
This topology involves implementation of one or more
"stretched" search head clusters that span two or more
sites. This provides optimal failover for users in case of a
search node or data center failure. Search artifacts and
other runtime knowledge objects are replicated in the
SHC. Careful configuration is required to ensure that
replication will happen across sites, as the SHC itself is
not site-aware (i.e. artifact replication is non-
deterministic).
Site-affinity can be configured to ensure the WAN link
between sites is utilized only in cases when a search
cannot be satisfied locally.
A network load-balancer that supports sticky sessions is
required in front of the SHC members to ensure proper
load balancing of users across the cluster.
Note for ES customers: If your category code is M14
(i.e. you intend to deploy the Splunk App for Enterprise
Security), a single dedicated search head cluster
contained within a site is required to deploy the app (this
is not explicitly pictured in the topology diagram). ES
requires a consistent set of runtime artifacts to be
available and this cannot be guaranteed in a stretched
SHC when a site outage occurs. To be able to recover an
ES SH environment from a site failure, 3rd party
technology can be used to perform a failover of the
search head instances or a "warm standby" ES SH can
be provisioned and kept in synch with the primary ES
environment. It is strongly recommended to engage with
Splunk Professional Services when deploying ES in a
HA/DR environment.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Splunk Indexer Architecture Options

Splunk Indexers can be configured using two main architecture options. Each option has its benefits and
drawbacks. Choosing which storage option to utilize requires understanding of the implications. Changing the
architecture later is not straightforward and requires a migration process that involves both infrastructure changes
as well as data movement. This chapter should help you in understanding those implications and making the right
choice to meet your specific requirements. Note that the indexer architecture for Splunk Cloud is chosen by
Splunk.

Classic Indexer Architecture Using File System Storage

In the classic, tried-and-true deployment model, indexers store data across the whole data lifecycle on a server-
accessible file system. This can be a direct-attached storage (DAS) filesystem only, or a combination of DAS
storage and network-attached file storage:

Note: Please refer to the Splunk documentation for information on supported storage and file system types.
This architecture tightly couples indexer compute and storage, is able to provide a consistent search performance profile
across all data at rest and has few external dependencies. While scaling out is relatively straightforward in this model, scaling
down is not easily possible and requires potentially time-consuming procedures. In clustered indexer topologies, Splunk
maintains multiple copies of the data across the configured retention period. This requires a potentially significant amount of
storage, especially when requirements for long-term data retention exist, and increases the TCO for the solution accordingly.
This architecture is recommended when you have requirements for either
• Short-term data retention (<=3 months) or
• Long-term retention and performance-critical search use cases that frequently access older historic data

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

SmartStore Indexer Architecture Using Object Storage

Splunk SmartStore Architecture was created primarily to provide a solution for decoupling of compute and
storage on the indexing tier to enable a more elastic indexing tier deployment.
Elasticity affords you the opportunity to add compute as needed, for example to satisfy higher search workload
demands, without also having to add storage. Similarly, increasing the amount of storage to extend your data
retention interval does not incur any additional infrastructure cost for compute.
This model can have significant positive impact on the TCO of your Splunk deployment, especially when you
retain data for long periods of time. SmartStore utilizes a fast, SSD-based cache on each indexer node to keep
recent data locally available for search. When data rolls to WARM lifecycle stage (see Splunk bucket lifecycle), it
is uploaded to an S3 API-compliant object store for persistence, but remains in local cache until it is evicted as
needed based on cache manager policy:

All data reliability responsibility is transferred to the object store to ensure lossless storage. That means that redundant
bucket copies created in the classic architecture do no longer need to be created by Splunk in the object store, leading to
the substantial storage savings for clustered deployments mentioned above.
Note: You can find a more detailed architecture diagram for SmartStore here.
Splunk's own analysis of customer search profiles has shown that 95%+ of all searches are run over time periods 7 days or
less. If your use cases fall into the same category, SmartStore can be a great choice to provide you more flexibility with scaling
compute and storage at a lower TCO. For environments with small total data volume and short data retention, or environments
where elasticity is not required, it is typically more economical to use the classic architecture.
To utilize the SmartStore indexer architecture, you will need an S3 API-compliant object store. This is readily available in
AWS, but may not be available in other cloud and on-prem environments. This object store needs to provide the same or
better availability as your indexing tier.
For details on how to implement SmartStore, please refer to the documentation here. For a
list of current SmartStore restrictions, please refer to the documentation here.
Important Note: If you intend to deploy SmartStore on-prem with an S3-compliant object store in a multi-site deployment
spanning data centers, please make sure you understand the specific requirements for the object store documented here.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Data Collection Architecture

The data collection tier is a core component of a Splunk deployment. It enables any device in your environment to
forward data to the indexing tier for processing, thereby making it available for search in Splunk. The most
important factor here is to ensure that forwarding and indexing happen in the most efficient and reliable way, as
this is critical to the success and performance of your Splunk deployment.
Consider the following aspects for your data collection tier architecture:
• The origin of your data. Does it come from log files, syslog sources, network inputs, OS event logging facilities,
applications, message bus or elsewhere?
• Requirements for data ingest latency and throughput
• Ideal event distribution across the indexers in your indexing tier
• Fault tolerance and automatic recovery (HA)
• Security and data sovereignty requirements
This section of SVAs focuses on the common data collection methods. This section also discusses architecture
and best practices for each data collection method and calls out potential issues to consider when making your
implementation choice.

Important Architectural Considerations and Why They Matter

Given the essential role of the data collection tier, it's important to understand the key considerations involved in
designing the architecture.
While some of these considerations may or may not be relevant to you based on your requirements, the
considerations in bold text in the table below describe fundamental items that are relevant for every environment.

Consideration Why is this important?

Data is ingested properly (timestamps, The importance of ideal event distribution across indexers cannot be
line breaking, truncation) overstated. The indexing tier works most efficiently when all available
indexers are equally utilized. This is true for both data ingest as well
as search performance. A single indexer that handles significantly
more data ingest compared to peers can negatively impact search
response times. For indexers with limited local disk storage, uneven
event distribution may also cause data to be prematurely aged out
before meeting the configured data retention policy.

Data is optimally distributed across If data is not ingested properly because event timestamps and line
available indexers breaking are not correctly configured, searching this data will become
very difficult. This is because event boundaries have to be enforced
at search time. Incorrect or missing timestamp extraction
configurations can cause unwanted implicit timestamp assignment.
This will confuse your users and make getting value out of your data
much more difficult than it needs to be.

All data reaches the indexing tier Any log data that is collected for the purpose of reliable analytics
reliably and without loss needs to be complete and valid, such that searches performed on the
data provide valid and accurate results.

All data reaches the indexing Delays in data ingest will increase the time between a potentially
tier with minimum latency critical event occurring and the ability to search for and react to it.
Minimal ingest latency is often crucial for monitoring use cases that
trigger alerts to staff or incur automated action.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Consideration Why is this important?

Data is secured while in transit If the data is either sensitive or has to be protected while being sent
over non-trusted networks, encryption of data may be required to
prevent unauthorized third- party interception. Generally, we
recommend all connections between Splunk components to be SSL
enabled.

Network resource use is minimized The network resource impact of log data collection must be
minimized so as not to impact other business critical network traffic.
For leased-line networks, minimizing network utilization also
contributes to a lower TCO of your deployment.

Authenticate/authorize data sources To prevent rogue data sources from affecting your indexing
environment, consider implementing connection
authentication/authorization. This may be covered by using network
controls, or by employing application-level mechanisms (e.g.,
SSL/TLS).

Because of its vital role for your deployment, the guidance in this document focuses on architectures that support
ideal event distribution. When a Splunk environment does not provide expected search performance, it is in
almost all cases either caused by not meeting minimum storage performance requirements and/or uneven event
distribution that limits exploiting search parallelization.
Before we take a look at the recommended data collection architecture components we identified during your use
of the iSVA tool, let's share some general guidance for the data collection tier.

General Data Collection Architecture Guidance

Ideally, the data collection tier is as "flat" as possible. This means that data sources are collected locally by a
universal forwarder and forwarded directly to the indexing tier. This is a best practice because it ensures minimal
data ingest latency (time to search) and enables proper event distribution across available indexers. Following
this best practice leads to ease of management and operational simplicity. We often see customers deploy an
intermediary forwarding tier. Generally speaking, avoid this unless requirements cannot be met otherwise. Due to
the potential impact of intermediary forwarders, this document contains a separate section on this topic with more
details.
There are endpoints that do not allow installation of the universal forwarder (network devices, appliances, etc.)
and log using the syslog protocol. A separate best practice architecture to collect such data sources is outlined in
the section titled Syslog Data Collection.
For data sources that have to be collected using programmatic means (e.g. via APIs, database access),
deploying a data collection node (DCN) based on a full Splunk enterprise install is recommended. This is also
known as a heavy forwarder. It is not recommended that you run these kinds of inputs on the search head tier in
anything other than a development environment.
The following diagram shows a general data collection architecture that reflects this guidance.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Data Collection Topology Overview

The diagram above shows the Deployment Server (DS) in the management tier, which is used to manage the
configurations on data collection components. Also, the License Manager (LM) is shown here since data
collection nodes require access to the LM to enable Splunk Enterprise features. The Cluster Manager (CM), if
available, can be used by forwarders for indexer discovery, removing the need to manage available indexers in
the forwarder output configuration.
In the above diagram, AutoLB represents the Splunk built-in auto-load balancing mechanism. This mechanism is
used to ensure proper event distribution for data sent using the Splunk proprietary S2S protocol (default port
9997). Note: Using an external network load-balancer for S2S traffic is currently not supported and not
recommended.
To load-balance traffic from data sources that communicate with an industry-standard protocol (like HTTP or
syslog), a Layer 7 network load balancer is used to ensure even load and event distribution across indexers in the
indexing tier.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Data Collection Components

The data collection tier is arguably the most critical part of your Splunk deployment topology. Splunk supports a
wide range of data collection mechanisms to help you ingest data into Splunk easily, such that it can be indexed
and made available to search.
This section of the document provides you with guidance on recommended data collection architecture
component deployment for various collection needs.

(UF) Universal Forwarder

The universal forwarder (UF) is the best choice for a large set of data collection requirements from systems in
your environment. It is a purpose-built data collection mechanism with minimal resource requirements. The UF
should be the default choice for collecting and forwarding log data.
The UF provides:
• Checkpoint/restart function for lossless data collection
• Efficient protocol that minimizes network bandwidth utilization
• Throttling capabilities
• Built-in, load-balancing across available indexers
• Optional network encryption using SSL/TLS
• Data compression (use only without SSL/TLS)
• Multiple input methods (files, Windows Event logs, network inputs, scripted inputs)
• Limited event filtering capabilities (Windows event logs only)
• Parallel ingestion pipeline support to increase throughput/reduce latency
With few exceptions for well-structured data (json, csv, tsv), the UF does not parse log sources into events, so it
cannot perform any action that requires understanding of the format of the logs. It also ships with a stripped down
version of Python, which makes it incompatible with any modular input apps that require a full Splunk stack to
function.
It is normal for a large number of UFs (100s to 10,000s) to be deployed on endpoints and servers in a Splunk
environment. The configuration of these UF deployments can be centrally managed, either with the Splunk
deployment server or a third-party configuration management tool (like e.g. Puppet or Chef).

(HF) Heavy Forwarder

The heavy forwarder (HF) is a full Splunk Enterprise deployment configured to act as a forwarder with indexing
disabled. A HF generally performs no other Splunk roles. The key difference between a UF and a HF is that the
HF contains the full parsing pipeline, performing the identical functions an indexer performs, without actually
writing and indexing events on disk. This enables the HF to understand and act on individual events, for example
to mask data or to perform filtering and routing based on event data. Since it is a full Splunk Enterprise install, it
can host modular inputs that require a full Python stack to function properly for data collection or serve as an
endpoint for the Splunk HTTP event collector (HEC).
The HF:
• Parses data into events
• Filters and routes based on individual event data
• Has a larger resource footprint than the UF
• Has a larger network bandwidth footprint than the UF (up to 5x)
• Provides a GUI for management

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

In general, HFs are not installed on endpoints for the purpose of data collection. Instead, they are used on
standalone systems to implement data collection nodes (DCN) or intermediary forwarding tiers. Use a HF only
when requirements to collect data from other systems cannot be met with a UF.
Examples of such requirements include:
• Reading data from RDBMS for the purpose of ingesting it into Splunk (database inputs)
• Collecting data from systems that are only reachable via an API (cloud services, VMWare monitoring,
proprietary systems, etc.)/li>
• Providing a dedicated tier to host the HTTP event collector service (HEC)
• Implementing an intermediary forwarding tier that requires a parsing forwarder for routing/filtering/masking

(HEC) HTTP Event Collector

The HEC provides a listener service that accepts HTTP/S connections on the server side, and an API on the
client side, allowing applications to post log data payloads directly to either the indexing tier or a dedicated HEC
receiver tier consisting of one or more heavy forwarders. HEC provides two endpoints that support data to be sent
either in raw format or in JSON format. Utilizing JSON can allow for additional metadata to be included in the
event payload that may facilitate greater flexibility when searching the data later.
The following diagram illustrates the two deployment options for HEC:

HEC Topology Choices

The management tier contains the license manager (required by HF) as well as the deployment server to manage
the HTTP inputs on the listening components. Note: If the indexing tier is clustered and receives HEC traffic
directly, HEC configuration is managed via the cluster manager instead of the deployment server.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

The decision for which deployment topology you choose depends largely on your specific workload. For example,
if you need to provide connectivity for a very large number of HTTP clients, a dedicated listener tier that can
provide the required system resources may be needed to not starve indexers for those resources. On the other
hand, if a large volume of data is coming in from a relatively small number of producers, ingesting this traffic
directly on indexers is preferable. Also, consider that a dedicated HEC listener tier introduces another
architectural component into your deployment, so avoid it unless your requirements dictate otherwise. On the
positive side, it can be scaled independently and provides a level of isolation from the indexing tier from a
management perspective. Also, since the dedicated HEC tier requires a HF, it will parse all inbound traffic,
removing some or all of that workload off of the indexers.
On the other hand, hosting the HEC listener directly on the indexers will likely ensure better event distribution
across the indexing tier, because HTTP is a well-understood protocol for all network load balancers and the
appropriate load balancing policy can help ensure that incoming data is evenly spread across available indexers.
In the spirit of deploying the simplest possible architecture that meets your requirements, we recommend you
consider hosting your HEC listener on the indexers, assuming you have sufficient system capacity to do so (see
above). This decision can easily be reverted later if the need arises, simply by deploying an appropriately sized
and configured HF tier and changing the LB configuration to use the HF's IP addresses instead of the indexers'.
That change should be transparent to client applications.
Note: If you do require indexer acknowledgment for data sent via HEC, a dedicated HEC listener tier is
recommended to minimize duplicate messages caused by rolling indexer restarts.
Note: This HEC deployment architecture is also used for providing the transport for some of the other data
collection components discussed later, specifically Syslog and metrics data collection.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

(DCN) Heavy Forwarder as Data Collection Node

Some data sources require collection by using some sort of an API. These APIs can include REST, web services,
JMS and/or JDBC as the query mechanism. Splunk as well as third-party developers provide a wide variety of
applications that allow these API interactions to occur. Most commonly, these applications are implemented using
the Splunk Modular Input framework, which requires a full Splunk enterprise software install to properly function.
The best practice to realize this use case is to deploy one or more servers to work as a heavy forwarder
configured to work as a Data Collection Node (DCN).

Data Collection Node Topology

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

(IF) Intermediary Forwarding Tier

In some situations, intermediary forwarders are needed for data forwarding. Intermediary forwarders receive log
streams from endpoints and forward it on to an indexer tier. Intermediary forwarders introduce architectural
challenges that require careful design in order to avoid negative impacts to the overall Splunk environment. Most
prominently, intermediary forwarders concentrate connections from 100s to 10,000s of endpoint forwarders and
forward to indexers using a far smaller number of connections. This can materially affect the data distribution
across the indexing tier, because only a subset of indexers is receiving traffic at any given point in time. However,
these negative side effects can be mitigated by proper sizing and configuration.
The following diagram illustrates this challenge well:

Intermediary Forwarding Topology

In a scenario with a single intermediary forwarder, all endpoints connect to this single forwarder (potentially
thousands), and the intermediary forwarder in turn only connects to one indexer at any given time. This is not an
optimal scenario because the following consequences are likely to occur:
• A large data stream from many endpoints is funneled through a single pipe that exhausts your system and
network resources
• Limited failover targets for the endpoints in case of IF failure (your outage risk is inversely proportional to the
number of IFs)
• A small number of indexers are served at any given point in time. Searches over short time periods will not
benefit from parallelization as much as they could otherwise

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Intermediary forwarders also add an additional architecture tier to your deployment which can complicate
management and troubleshooting and adds latency to your data ingest path. Try to avoid using intermediary
forwarding tiers unless this is the only option to meet your requirements. You may consider using an intermediary
tier if you have:
• Sensitive data that needs to be obfuscated/removed before sending across the network to indexers. An
example is when you must use a public network
• Strict security policies that do not allow for direct connections between endpoints and indexers such as multi-
zone networks or cloud-based indexers
• Bandwidth constraints between endpoints and indexers requiring a significant subset of events to be filtered
• Requirements to perform event-based routing to dynamic targets
Consider sizing and configuration needs for any intermediary forwarding tier to ensure availability of this tier,
provide sufficient processing capacity to handle all traffic and support good event distribution across indexers.
The IF tier has the following requirements:
Sufficient number of data processing pipelines overall Redundant IF infrastructure
Properly tuned Splunk load-balancing configuration. For example, autoLBVolume, EVENT_BREAKER,
EVENT_BREAKER_ENABLE, possibly forceTimeBasedAutoLB as needed
The general guideline suggests having twice as many IF processing pipelines as indexers in the indexing tier.
Note: A processing pipeline does not equate to a physical IF server. Provided sufficient system resources (CPU
cores, memory and NIC bandwidth) are available, a single IF can be configured with multiple processing
pipelines.
If you need an IF tier (see questionnaire), default to using UF for the tier since they provide higher throughput at a
lower resource footprint for both the system and network. Use HF if the UF capabilities do not meet your
requirements.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

(KAFKA) Consuming Log Data From Kafka Topics

Splunk provides a supported sink connector for consuming data from Kafka topics called "Splunk Connect for
Kafka." See Apache Kafka Connect in the Splunk Connect for Kafka Manual for detailed product documentation.
The Splunk Connect for Kafka package is installed into a properly sized Kafka Connect cluster (outside of
Splunk), where it can subscribe to topics as configured and send consumed events using the HEC to be indexed:

Data Collection Topology Using Kafka and HEC

The diagram shows Kafka Publishers sending messages to the Kafka bus. The tasks hosted in the Kafka Connect cluster
consume those messages via the Splunk Connect for Kafka and send the data to the HEC listening service using a network
load balancer. Again, the HEC listening service can be either hosted directly on the indexers, or on a dedicated HEC listener
tier. Please refer to the HEC section for details. Management tier components are only required if a dedicated HF tier is
deployed to host HEC listeners.
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(KINESIS) Consuming Log Data From Amazon Kinesis Firehose

Splunk and Amazon have implemented an integration between Kinesis and the Splunk HEC that enables you to
stream data from AWS directly to a HEC endpoint, configurable via your AWS console. This is complemented by
the Splunk Add-On for Kinesis Firehose which provides CIM-compliant knowledge for various data sources
originating in AWS.

Data Collection Topology Using Amazon Kinesis

The diagram shows AWS log sources being sent using a Kinesis stream to the Firehose, which with proper
configuration will send the data to the HEC listening service via an AWS ELB. Again, the HEC listening service
can be either hosted directly on the indexers, or on a dedicated HEC listener tier. Please refer to the HEC section
for details.
Management tier components shown are only required if a dedicated HF tier is deployed to host HEC listeners.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

(METRICS) Metrics Collection

Splunk has the capability to receive and collect system and application performance data, or metrics data, from a
variety of 3rd party software. Metrics in the Splunk platform use a custom index type that is optimized for metrics
storage and retrieval.
There are different ways to consume metrics data and the collection method is based upon the technology used.
The most common form of metrics collections comes in the form of a software daemon, such as collectd, statsd
or using a customized metrics data file and valid configuration for the data source.
There are primarily two methods for getting metrics into Splunk when using agents such statsd and collectd. Either
using a Direct TCP/UDP input or via the HEC.
Using HEC is considered a best practice due to the resiliency and scalability of the HEC endpoint, and the ability
to horizontally scale the collection tier easily.

Metrics Data Collection Topology

Statsd currently supports UDP and TCP transport, which you can use as a direct input on a Splunk Forwarder, or
Indexer. However, it is not a best practice to send TCP/UDP traffic directly to forwarders in production as the
architecture is not resilient and prone to event loss (see Syslog collection) caused by required Splunk forwarder
restarts.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

(SYSLOG) Syslog Data Collection

The syslog protocol delivers a ubiquitous source for log data in the enterprise. Most scalable and reliable data
collection tiers contain a syslog ingestion component. There are multiple ways to get syslog data into Splunk:
• Splunk Connect for Syslog (SC4S): This is the current best practice recommendation to collect syslog data.
It provides a Splunk-supported turn-key solution and utilizes the HTTP Event Collector to send data to Splunk
for indexing. It scales well and addresses the shortcomings of other methods.
• Universal forwarder (UF)/heavy forwarder (HF): Use a Splunk UF or HF to monitor (ingest) files written out by a
syslog server (such as rsyslog or syslog-ng). While still widely in use, we no longer recommend this as a best-practice
approach in favor of SC4S.
• Direct TCP/UDP Input: Splunk has the ability to listen on a TCP or UDP port (default port is UDP 514) and
accept syslog traffic directly. While this is acceptable for lab and test environments, Splunk strongly
discourages this practice in any production environment.

Splunk Connect for Syslog (SC4S - recommended best practice)

Many of the most common data sources that power Splunk product use cases require a syslog server for data
collection. Highly specific expertise is required to successfully design, deploy and configure a syslog server to
properly work with Splunk at scale. Additionally, the Universal Forwarder or Heavy Forwarder approach to syslog
collection has several issues with scale and complexity. Some customers send syslog events directly to Splunk to
avoid architecting a syslog server, which introduces further problems. To help customers address these issues,
Splunk developed Splunk Connect for Syslog (SC4S).
Splunk Connect for Syslog is offered in two flavors: An OCI-compliant container for ease of deployment and
OOTB functionality, and a "Bring Your Own Environment" (BYOE) option for customers that are prevented from
utilizing the containerized option for some reason. Both options are based on Syslog-ng server software and
encapsulate the same set of configurations, while differing on the details of how Syslog-ng itself is instantiated.
Splunk strongly recommends the SC4S containerized solution for all customers able to adopt it.
The benefits of Splunk Connect for Syslog include the following:
• Repeatable, concise and prescriptive Splunk solution for syslog
• Removal of the UF reduces configuration and management effort
• Reduce/remove need for add-on installation and management on indexers
• Turnkey deployment via the SC4S container architecture
• Custom deployment via a "Bring Your Own Environment" distribution
• A library of data source filters we will be continually extending with the help of the community
• Exceptionally even event distribution across the Splunk Indexers (benefits search performance, storage
utilization and data retention)
• Enhanced data enrichment beyond the standard Splunk metadata of timestamp, host, source and sourcetype
• Easily add custom filters for additional sourcetypes beyond those supported out of the box
• Complete deployment documentation available here

The diagram below shows syslog sources sending data to the SC4S instance that is physically closer to them.
Events from a source for which SC4S has a 'filter' log path configuration will be identified, parsed and formatted
into JSON before being streamed to Splunk via HTTP/HTTPS. Best practice is to implement a network load
balancer between SC4S and the Indexers to achieve the best data distribution possible. The events hitting the
Indexer are already prepared so there is no need for an Add-On on the Indexer in most cases.

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Splunk Validated Architectures

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Syslog (File monitoring in conjunction with a syslog server)

Splunk can use monitoring (using inputs.conf) on a UF/HF to process and ingest syslog sources that are written to
disk on an endpoint by a syslog server. Most commonly encountered, rsyslog, syslog-ng and Fastvue offer
commercial and free solutions that are both scalable and simple to integrate and manage in both low volume
environments and large scale distributed environments.
To learn more about how to configure monitors, see Monitor files and directories in Getting Data In.
This architecture supports proper data onboarding in the same way a universal forwarder does on any other
endpoint. You can configure the syslog server to identify multiple different log types and write out log events in
appropriate files and directories where a Splunk forward can pick them up. This also adds a level of persistence to
the syslog log stream by writing events to disk, which can limit exposure to data loss for messages sent using the
unreliable UDP as transport.

Syslog Data Collection Topology using UF

The diagram shows syslog sources sending data using TCP or UDP on port 514 to a load-balanced pool of syslog
servers. Multiple servers ensure HA for the collection tier and can prevent data loss during maintenance
operations. Each syslog server is configured to apply rules to the syslog stream that result in syslog events being
written to dedicated files/directories for each source type (firewall events, OS syslog, network switches, IPS, etc.).
The UF that is deployed to each server monitors those files and forwards the data to the indexing tier for
processing into the appropriate index. Splunk AutoLB is used to distribute the data evenly across the available
indexers.
The deployment server shown in the management tier can be used to centrally manage the UF configuration.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Splunk UDP Input

Splunk can utilize a direct UDP input on a UF or HF to receive data from syslog. To learn about configuring TCP
and UDP ports, see Get data from TCP and UDP ports in Getting Data In. The ability to receive events on UDP
514 relies on the ability of the UF/HF to run as root. Additionally, the agent must be available 100% of the time to
avoid the possibility of data loss. Forwarders may be restarted frequently to apply configuration changes, which
pretty much guarantees data loss. For these and other reasons, this is not considered a best practice for a
production deployment.

High-Availability Considerations for Forwarding Tier components

There is a common concept of high availability (HA) in the digital world. However, depending upon the
organization, the meaning can vary and be more in line with disaster recovery (DR) as opposed to high
availability. These two concepts, while similar, do have different meanings. HA is a characteristic of a system,
which aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period.
DR involves a set of policies, tools, and procedures to enable the recovery or continuation of vital technology
infrastructure and systems following a disaster.
The following outlines various forms of HA at the intermediate/aggregation tier:
Intermediate tier
• For customers with intermediate/aggregate tier deployments, HA of forwarders is mission-critical. At the
application layer, Splunk currently does not have a native support method for HA. There are other strategies
for providing HA at the operating system level that are not native to Splunk. Common solutions include
VMWare VMotion, AWS Autoscaling Groups and Linux Clustering. Consult with your Splunk Architect to
discuss other design options available to you.
• For environments with an HA requirements for a dedicated HEC tier, it's a best practice to use a network traffic
load balancer (NTLB), such as NGINX, in front of multiple Splunk heavy forwarders. This provides the
advantage of maximum throughput, scale and availability. You have a dedicated pool of HTTP event collector
instances whose only job is to receive and forward data. You can add more HEC instances without necessarily
having to add more indexers. If your indexers become a bottleneck, add additional indexers.
• Using a network load-balancer (L4/L7) to provide a highly available syslog collection infrastructure is
discouraged due to potential data loss and fidelity concerns (IP lost in proxy). The recommended approach is
to use a cluster resource manager solution (e.g. pacemaker/keepalived) or a VM-based syslog server
deployment instead. Splunk does not have any insight into available technologies at your company, so please
engage the in-house experts in your network team to design and deploy such an HA solution.
• Using a DNS based solution (Global Load Balancer) should be limited to resolving the closest receiver. Most
common source devices do not honor DNS TTL and can be subject to data loss for minutes to hours if a DNS-
based approach is chosen for load distribution.

Finally, where possible, UDP is preferred over TCP for syslog sources. While TCP can recover in some cases
(single packet loss at high throughput), the recovery is more than likely to result in the loss of more than one
event.
Forwarding tier
At the forwarding (endpoint) tier, HA for the agent itself is dependent upon the underlying OS. At the very
minimum, you should ensure that any services that implement forwarding functionality are restarted automatically
when the host OS restarts. Outside of that, best practices for the forwarders would involve the configuration and
proper use of AutoLB from the forwarders to multiple indexers. This also may involve use of the indexer
acknowledgement feature in order to guarantee data arrives at the indexing tier at least once (potential duplicates
with indexer acknowledgement must be handled when searching).

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Design Principles and Best Practices

Below you will find design principles and best practices separated by deployment tier.

Deployment Tiers
SVA design principles cover all of the following deployment tiers:

Tier Definition
Search Search heads
Indexing Indexers
Collection Forwarders
Modular Inputs
Network
HEC (HTTP Event Collector) etc.
Management / Utility CM
DS
LM
DMS
SHC-D

Aligning Your Topology With Best Practices

You will need to keep your requirements and topology in mind in order to select the appropriate design principles
and best practices for your deployment. Therefore, you should consider best practices only after you have
completed Steps 1 and 2 of the Splunk Validated Architectures selection process above.

Best Practices: Tier-Specific Recommendations

Below you will find design principles and best practices recommendation for each deployment tier. Each design
principle reinforces one or more of the SVA pillars: Availability, Performance, Scalability, Security and
Manageability.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Search Tier Recommendations

SVA PILLARS

MANAGEABILITY
PERFORMANCE
AVAILABILITY

SCALABILITY

SECURITY
DESIGN PRINCIPLES / BEST PRACTICES
(Your requirements will determine which practices apply to you)

1 Keep search tier close (in network terms) to the indexing tier
Any network delays between search and indexing tier will have direct
impact on search performance
2 Avoid using multiple independent search heads
Independent search heads do not allow sharing of Splunk artifacts
created by users. They also do not scale well with respect to resource
utilization across the search tier. Unless there is a specific need to have
isolated search head environments, Search Head Clustering is a better
option to scale.
3 Exploit Search Head Clustering when scaling the search tier
A search head cluster replicates user artifacts across the cluster and
allows intelligent search workload scheduling across all members of the
cluster. It also provides a high availability solution.
4 Forward all search heads' internal logs to indexing tier
All indexed data should be stored on the indexing tier only. This
removes the need to provide high- performing storage on the search
head tier and simplifies management. Note: This also applies to any
other Splunk roles.
5 Consider using LDAP auth whenever possible Centrally managing user
identities for authentication purposes is a general enterprise best
practice, simplifies management of your Splunk deployment and
increases security.
6 Ensure enough cores to cover concurrent search needs
Every search requires a CPU core to execute. If no cores are available
to run a search, the search will be queued, resulting in search delays for
the user. Note: Applicable to Indexing Tier as well.
7 Utilize scheduled search time windows as possible / smooth scheduled
search load
Often, scheduled searches run at specific points in time (on the hour,
5/15/30 minute after the hour, at midnight). Providing a time window that
your search can run in helps avoiding search concurrency hotspots.

8 Limit the number of distinct search head clusters so as not to overwhelm

indexing tier
Search workload can only be governed automatically within a given SH
environment. Independent SHCs have the potential to create more
concurrent search workload than the indexer (search peer) tier can
handle. The same is true for carefully planning the number of standalone
search heads.
9 When building Search Head Clusters, use an odd number of nodes
(3,5,7, etc.)
SHC captain election is performed using a majority- based protocol. An
odd number of nodes ensures that a SHC can never be split into even
numbers of nodes during network failures.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Indexing Tier Recommendations

SVA PILLARS

MANAGEABILITY
PERFORMANCE

SCALABILITY
AVAILABILITY

SECURITY
DESIGN PRINCIPLES / BEST PRACTICES
(Your requirements will determine which practices apply to you)

1 Enable parallel pipelines on capable servers to take advantage of available

resources
Parallelization features enable exploitation of available system resources
that would otherwise sit idle. Note that I/O performance must be adequate
before enabling ingest parallelization features.
2 Consider using SSDs for HOT/WARM volumes and Summaries
SSDs have reached economical prices and remove any possible IO
limitations that are often the cause for unsatisfactory search performance.
3 Keep indexing tier close (in network terms) to the search tier
Lowest possible network latency will have positive effect on user experience
when searching.
4 Use index replication when historical data / report HA is needed
Index replication ensures multiple copies of every event in the cluster to
protect against search peer failure. Adjust the number of copies (replication
factor) to match your SLAs.
5 Ensure good data onboarding hygiene (e.g. line breaking, timestamp
extraction, TZ, and source, source type, host are properly and explicitly
defined for each data source) and establish ongoing monitoring using the
Monitoring Console
Explicitly configuring data sources vs. relying on Splunk's auto-detection
capabilities has been proven to have significant benefit to data ingest
capacity and indexing latency, especially in high-volume deployments.
6 Consider configuring batch mode search parallelization setting on indexers
with excess processing power
Exploiting search parallelization features can have a significant impact on
search performance for certain types of searches and allows you to utilize
system resources that may otherwise be unused
7 Monitor for balanced data distribution across indexer nodes (=search peers).
Even event/data distribution across the search peers is a critical contributing
factor for search performance and proper data retention policy enforcement.
8 Disable web UI on indexers in distributed/clustered deployments.
There is no reasonable need to access the WebUI directly on indexers.
9 Consider Splunk pre-built Technology Add-Ons for well-known data sources
Rather than building your own configuration to ensure data onboarding
hygiene for well understood data sources, Splunk-provided TAs can provide
faster time to value and ensure optimal implementation.
Monitor critical indexer metrics
10
Splunk provides you with a monitoring console that provides key
performance metrics on how your indexing tier is performing. This includes
CPU and memory utilization, as well as detailed metrics of internal Splunk
components (processes, pipelines, queues, search).

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Collection Tier Recommendations

SVA PILLARS

MANAGEABILITY
PERFORMANCE

SCALABILITY
AVAILABILITY

SECURITY
DESIGN PRINCIPLES / BEST PRACTICES
(Your requirements will determine which practices apply to you)

1 Use UF to forward data whenever possible. Use of the Heavy Forwarder

should be limited to the use cases that require it.
Built-in autoLB, restart capable, centrally configurable, small resource
demand
2 Use at least 2x intermediary forwarding pipelines to indexers when
funneling many UFs
Multiplexing a large number of endpoint forwarders across a small
number of intermediary forwarders impacts even event distribution
across indexers, which affects search performance. Only deploy
intermediary forwarders if absolutely necessary.
3 Consider securing UF-IDX traffic using SSL/TLS
Encrypting data in transit reduces the amount of data transmitted and
improves the security of your deployment
4 Use native Splunk LB to spray data to indexing tier
Network load-balancers are not currently supported between forwarders
and indexers.
5 Utilize Splunk Connect for Syslog (SC4S) containers for syslog collection
as close to the data sources as possible.
SC4S can be quickly deployed and configured to collect data from most
popular data sources with minimal effort.
6 Use HEC for agent-less collection (instead of native TCP/UDP)
The HTTP Event Collector (HEC) is a listening service that allows events
to be posted via the HTTP[/S] protocol. It can be enabled directly on
indexers, or configured on a heavy forwarder tier; both served by a load
balancer.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Management / Utility Tier Recommendations

SVA PILLARS

MANAGEABILITY
PERFORMANCE

SCALABILITY
AVAILABILITY

SECURITY
DESIGN PRINCIPLES / BEST PRACTICES
(Your requirements will determine which practices apply to you)

1 Consider consolidating LM, CM, SHC-D and MC on a single instance for

small environments
These server roles have very little resource demands and are good
candidates for colocation. In larger indexer clusters, the CM may require a
dedicated server to efficiently manage the cluster.
2 Consider a separate instance for DS for medium to large deployments
Once a significant number of forwarders are managed via the Deployment
Server, the resource needs will increase to where a dedicated server is
required to maintain the service.

3 Consider multiple DSs behind LB for deployments with a very large

number of managed systems
Note: This may require help from Splunk professional services to be set
up and configured properly
4 Determine whether DS phoneHomeIntervalInSecs can be backed off the
60 second default
A longer phone home interval will have positive effect on DS scalability
5 Use dedicated/secured DS to avoid client exploitation via app deployment
Anyone with access to the Deployment Server can modify Splunk
configuration managed by that DS, including potentially deploying
malicious applications to forwarder endpoints. Securing this role
appropriately is prudent.
6 Use the Monitoring Console (MC) to monitor the health of your deployment
and alert on health issues.
The monitoring console provides a pre-built, splunk- specific set of
monitoring solutions and health checks, and contains extensible platform
alerts that can notify you about degrading health of your environment.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Summary & Next Steps

This whitepaper has provided a general introduction to Splunk Validated Architectures. A Validated Architecture
ensures that your organization's requirements are being met in the most cost-effective, manageable and scalable
way possible. SVAs offer best practices and design principles built upon the following foundational pillars:
• Availability
• Performance
• Scalability
• Security
• Manageability

This whitepaper has also covered the 3-step Splunk Validated Architectures selection process:
• Definition of requirements,
• Choosing a topology,
• Applying design principles and best practices,
• and covered both search and indexing tiers as well as the data collection tier.

Now that you are familiar with the multiple benefits of Splunk Validated Architectures, we hope you are ready to
move forward with the process of choosing a suitable deployment topology for your organization.

Next Steps
So, what comes after choosing a Validated Architecture? The next steps on your journey to a working
environment include:
• Customizations
Consider any necessary customizations your chosen topology may need to meet specific requirements
• Deployment Model
Decide on deployment model (bare metal, virtual, cloud)
• System
Select your technology (servers, storage, operating systems) according to Splunk system requirements
• Sizing
Gather all the relevant data you will need to size your deployment (data ingest, expected search volume, data
retention needs, replication, etc.) and consult with a Splunk expert to size your environment
• Staffing
Evaluate your staffing needs to implement and manage your deployment. This is an essential part of building
out a Splunk Center of Excellence

We are here to assist you throughout the Validated Architectures process and with next steps. Please feel free to
engage your Splunk Account Team with any questions you might have. Your Account Team will have access to
the full suite of technical and architecture resources within Splunk and will be happy to provide you with further
information.
Happy Splunking!

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Appendix
This section contains additional reference information used in the SVAs.

Appendix "A": SVA Pillars Explained

Pillar Description Primary Goals / Design Principles

Availability The ability to be continuously 1. Eliminate single points of failure / Add redundancy
operational and able to recover 2. Detect planned and unplanned failures/outages
from planned and unplanned
outages or disruptions. 3. Tolerate planned/unplanned outages, ideally
automatically
4. Plan for rolling upgrades

Performance The ability to effectively use 1. Add hardware to improve performance; compute,
available resources to maintain storage, memory.
optimal level of service under 2. Eliminate bottlenecks 'from the bottom up'
varying usage patterns.
3. Exploit all means of concurrent processing
4. Exploit locality (i.e. minimize distribution of components)
5. Optimize for the common case (80/20 rule)
6. Avoid unnecessary generality
7. Time shift computation (pre-compute, lazily compute,
share/batch compute)
8. Trade certainty and accuracy for time (randomization,
sampling)

Scalability The ability to ensure that the 1. Scale vertically and horizontally
system is designed to scale on 2. Separate functional components that need to be scaled
all tiers and handle increased individually
workloads effectively.
3. Minimize dependencies between components
4. Design for known future growth as early as possible
5. Introduce hierarchy in the overall system design

Security The ability to ensure that the 1. Design for a secure system from the start
system is designed to protect 2. Employ state-of-the art protocols for all communications
data as well as
configurations/assets while 3. Allow for broad-level and granular access to event data
continuing to deliver value. 4. Employ centralized authentication
5. Implement auditing procedures
6. Reduce attack or malicious use surface area

Manageability The ability to ensure the system 1. Provide a centralized management function
is designed to be centrally 2. Manage configuration object lifecycle (source control)
operable and manageable
across all tiers. 3. Measure and monitor/profile application (Splunk) usage
4. Measure and monitor system health

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Appendix "B": Topology Components

Tier Component Icon Description Notes

Management Deployment The deployment server manages Should be deployed on a

Server (DS) configuration of forwarder dedicated instance. It can be
configuration. virtualized for easy failure
recovery.

License The license master is required by The license master role has
Master (LM) other Splunk components to minimal capacity and availability
enable licensed features and requirements and can be
track daily data ingest volume. colocated with other management
functions. It can be virtualized for
easy failure recovery.

Monitoring The monitoring console provides In clustered environments, the MC

Console (MC) dashboards for usage and health can be colocated with the Master
monitoring of your environment. It Node, in addition to the License
also contains a number of pre- Master and Deployment server
packaged platform alerts that can function in non-clustered
be customized to provide deployments. It can be virtualized
notifications for operational for easy failure recovery.
issues.

Cluster The cluster manager is the In clusters with a large number of

Manager (CM) required coordinator for all activity index buckets (high data
in a clustered deployment. volume/retention), the cluster
manager will likely require a
dedicated server to run on. It can
be virtualized for easy failure
recovery.

Search Head The search head cluster deployer The SHC-D is not a runtime
Cluster is needed to bootstrap a SHC component and has minimal
Deployer and manage Splunk configuration system requirements. It can be
(SHC-D) deployed to the cluster. colocated with other management
roles. Note: Each SHC requires its
own SHC-deployer function. It can
be virtualized for easy failure
recovery.

Search Search Head The search head provides the UI Search heads are dedicated
(SH) for Splunk users and coordinates Splunk instances in distributed
scheduled search activity. deployments. Search heads can
be virtualized for easy failure
recovery, provided they are
deployed with appropriate CPU
and memory resources.

Search Head A search head cluster is a pool of Search head clusters require
Cluster (SHC) at least three clustered Search dedicated servers of ideally
Heads. It provides horizontal identical system specifications.
scalability for the search head tier Search head cluster members can
and transparent user failover in be virtualized for easy failure
case of outages. recovery, provided they are
deployed with appropriate CPU
and memory resources.

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 Splunk Validated Architectures

Tier Component Icon Description Notes

Indexing Indexer Indexers are the heart and soul of Indexers must always be on
Splunk. They process and index dedicated servers in distributed or
incoming data and also serve as clustered deployments. In a single-
search peers to fulfill search server deployment, the indexer will
requests initiated on the search also provide the search UI and
tier. license master functions. Indexers
perform best on bare metal servers
or in dedicated, high-performance
virtual machines, if adequate
resources can be guaranteed.

Data Forwarders General icon for any component This includes universal and heavy
Collection and other data involved in data collection. forwarders, network data inputs
collection and other forms of data collection
components (HEC, Kafka, etc.)

Splunk SC4S is the current best practice We created a dedicated icon for
Connect for approach for SYSLOG data SC4S to reflect a fundamentally
Syslog (SC4S) collection. different, containerized
deployment model for this data
collection tier component.

Splunk, Splunk>, Data-to-Everything, D2E and Turn Data Into Doing are trademarks and registered trademarks of Splunk Inc. in the United States 47
and other countries. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective owners. © 2020 Splunk Inc. All rights reserved.