Length* 30 Min
Unlock the full potential of your Cisco network with Splunk! This beginner to intermediate session at Cisco Live demystifies how Splunk can be used for real-time monitoring and performance analysis. Discover the step-by-step process of integrating Cisco IOS devices with Splunk on OS X, from setup to data ingestion. Learn to track network health, analyze traffic patterns, and identify performance bottlenecks in real-time. By transforming complex data into clear insights, you'll leave equipped to make informed decisions, optimizing your network's efficiency and reliability. Embark on this practical journey to elevate your network management skills with Splunk
goal: integrating Cisco IOS devices with Splunk on OS X from setup to data ingestion
notes-install.md
notes-install.md
Some of you might be asking the question, "What exactly IS Splunk?" Perhaps just as many of you may be asking, "What's with the name?" Here's a quote from Splunk's About page:
Splunk was founded in 2003 to solve problems in complex digital infrastructures. From the beginning, we’ve helped organizations explore the vast depths of their data like spelunkers in a cave (hence, “Splunk").
Ok, that tells me where the name came from but it's still pretty vague on what their platform does. Over time the amount of digital information generated by companies has grown exponentially, while their ability to sift through that data has not kept up with the demand - customers are quite literally "drowning" in data. What they need is a massive data consolidation platform which can store, index, analyze and visualize that data, to help their staff gain insight. That's where the Splunk platform comes in: It provides fast, scalable and flexible solutions for storing and analyzing digital data. That flexibility is key - with Splunk Enterprise you can ingest data from many different sources, in many different formats, using many different methods. Once the data is indexed, you can build search queries and visualizations to help you locate specific events, identify trends and develop unique insights.
Splunk provides a wealth of documentation on their products and platforms at https://docs.splunk.com - as such, we won't attempt to teach you everything about Splunk Enterprise in this tutorial. However, we will take some time to orient you to some basic concepts of the Splunk Enterprise platform. At the time of this writing, Splunk Enterprise v9.2.0 is the latest GA release available and we'll base this tutorial on that version. An overview of Splunk Enterprise can be found here.
Platform Overview:
The Splunk Enterprise platform is a software package, developed for Linux, Windows and MacOS operating systems, which can run as a background service once installed. Splunk Enterprise is most commonly managed via a web interface (the default URL, once installed, is http://<ip_or_dns_name>:8000) however, there are CLI tools available to administer the platform as well.
Splunk Enterprise provides many different methods for ingesting data, such as:
- HTTP
- Syslog
- TCP/UDP ports
- Static file uploads
- Distributed Splunk Forwarders
Once your data reaches Splunk Enterprise it is stored in an Index database and becomes searchable. Splunk Enterprise provides search commands, data transformation tools, report generation, alert triggering, and data visualization via dashboard design tools. Splunk Enterprise is also extensible, via the Splunkbase Application Marketplace, so that customers and 3rd-party vendors can easily build and exchange custom applications which provide interoperability and added features.
Terminology:
- Event: A Splunk "event" is a set of values associated with a timestamp. It is a single data entry in a database, which can contain as much or as little information as necessary.
- Metric: A Splunk "metric" is a data point entry associated with a timestamp, consisting of one or more measurements and, optionally, zero or more "dimensions" (attributes about the data point).
- Host: A host is the name or network address of the physical or virtual device where an event or metric originated.
- Source: A source is the name of the file, directory, data stream, or other input from which an event or metric originated.
- Source Type: Unique classifications for data sources, which can either be well-known formats or user-defined.
- Fields: Searchable name and value pairings that are extracted from event data.
- Indexes: Discrete databases on the Splunk platform where event or metric data is stored.
- Apps: Collections of configuration settings, knowledge objects, views and dashboards, which combine to extend the native capabilities of the Splunk platform. The most common purpose for an app is to add product or platform integration, which doesn't exist out-of-the-box in Splunk.
- Dashboards: Static or interactive web views within Splunk, made up of panels that contain visualization or data filtering modules. Dashboards are used to display the results of search queries in different visual formats.
- Search Processing Language (SPL): The query language, made of a series of search commands and arguments, which is used to filter and transform data returned from Splunk Indexes.