Splunk Fundamentals 1 Practice Exam

Which component can be responsible for a distributed search in Splunk?

1. Indexer

2. Forwarder

3. Search Head

4. Deployment Server

The correct answer is: Search Head

The Search Head is responsible for distributed searches in Splunk. It acts as the user interface for searching and analyzing data, and it coordinates and manages search requests across multiple indexers in a distributed environment. When a user submits a search, the Search Head breaks it down and sends sub-searches to the relevant indexers that hold the data, collects the results, and consolidates them for the user. This capability is essential for organizations that utilize a distributed architecture to handle large volumes of data efficiently. In contrast, the Indexer is primarily responsible for indexing and storing data, while the Forwarder is designed to collect and send data to indexers. The Deployment Server helps manage configuration updates across Splunk instances but does not handle search queries directly. Therefore, the Search Head is the key component in enabling distributed search capabilities in Splunk.