Splunk Splunk Certifications SPLK-4001 Questions & Answers

• Question 11:

  What information is needed to create a detector?

  A. Alert Status, Alert Criteria, Alert Settings, Alert Message, Alert Recipients

  B. Alert Signal, Alert Criteria, Alert Settings, Alert Message, Alert Recipients

  C. Alert Signal, Alert Condition, Alert Settings, Alert Message, Alert Recipients

  D. Alert Status, Alert Condition, Alert Settings, Alert Meaning, Alert Recipients

  Correct Answer: C

  According to the Splunk Observability Cloud documentation1, to create a detector, you need the following information:

  Alert Signal: This is the metric or dimension that you want to monitor and alert on. You can select a signal from a chart or a dashboard, or enter a SignalFlow query to define the signal.

  Alert Condition: This is the criteria that determines when an alert is triggered or cleared. You can choose from various built-in alert conditions, such as static threshold, dynamic threshold, outlier, missing data, and so on. You can also specify

  the severity level and the trigger sensitivity for each alert condition. Alert Settings: This is the configuration that determines how the detector behaves and interacts with other detectors. You can set the detector name, description, resolution,

  run lag, max delay, and detector rules. You can also enable or disable the detector, and mute or unmute the alerts.

  Alert Message: This is the text that appears in the alert notification and event feed. You can customize the alert message with variables, such as signal name, value, condition, severity, and so on. You can also use markdown formatting to

  enhance the message appearance.

  Alert Recipients: This is the list of destinations where you want to send the alert notifications. You can choose from various channels, such as email, Slack, PagerDuty, webhook, and so on. You can also specify the notification frequency and

  suppression settings.

• Question 12:

  A DevOps engineer wants to determine if the latency their application experiences is growing fester after a new software release a week ago. They have already created two plot lines, A and B, that represent the current latency and the latency a week ago, respectively. How can the engineer use these two plot lines to determine the rate of change in latency?

  A. Create a temporary plot by dragging items A and B into the Analytics Explorer window.

  B. Create a plot C using the formula (A-B) and add a scale:percent function to express the rate of change as a percentage.

  C. Create a plot C using the formula (A/B-l) and add a scale: 100 function to express the rate of change as a percentage.

  D. Create a temporary plot by clicking the Change% button in the upper-right corner of the plot showing lines A and B.

  Correct Answer: C

  The correct answer is C. Create a plot C using the formula (A/B-l) and add a scale: 100 function to express the rate of change as a percentage. To calculate the rate of change in latency, you need to compare the current latency (plot A) with the latency a week ago (plot B). One way to do this is to use the formula (A/B-l), which gives you the ratio of the current latency to the previous latency minus one. This ratio represents how much the current latency has increased or decreased relative to the previous latency. For example, if the current latency is 200 ms and the previous latency is 100 ms, then the ratio is (200/100-l) = 1, which means the current latency is 100% higher than the previous latency To express the rate of change as a percentage, you need to multiply the ratio by 100. You can do this by adding a scale: 100 function to the formula. This function scales the values of the plot by a factor of 100. For example, if the ratio is 1, then the scaled value is 100%2 To create a plot C using the formula (A/B-l) and add a scale: 100 function, you need to follow these steps: Select plot A and plot B from the Metric Finder. Click on Add Analytics and choose Formula from the list of functions. In the Formula window, enter (A/B-l) as the formula and click Apply. Click on Add Analytics again and choose Scale from the list of functions. In the Scale window, enter 100 as the factor and click Apply. You should see a new plot C that shows the rate of change in latency as a percentage. To learn more about how to use formulas and scale functions in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can refer to these documentations. https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/percentage-change.html https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/analytics.html#Scale https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/analytics.html#Formula https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/analytics.html#Scale

• Question 13:

  What happens when the limit of allowed dimensions is exceeded for an MTS?

  A. The additional dimensions are dropped.

  B. The datapoint is averaged.

  C. The datapoint is updated.

  D. The datapoint is dropped.

  Correct Answer: A

  According to the web search results, dimensions are metadata in the form of key-value pairs that monitoring software sends in along with the metrics. The set of metric time series (MTS) dimensions sent during ingest is used, along with the metric name, to uniquely identify an MTS. Splunk Observability Cloud has a limit of 36 unique dimensions per MTS. If the limit of allowed dimensions is exceeded for an MTS, the additional dimensions are dropped and not stored or indexed by Observability Cloud. This means that the data point is still ingested, but without the extra dimensions. Therefore, option A is correct.

• Question 14:

  Which of the following chart visualization types are unaffected by changing the time picker on a dashboard? (select all that apply)

  A. Single Value

  B. Heatmap

  C. Line

  D. List

  Correct Answer: AD

  The chart visualization types that are unaffected by changing the time picker on a dashboard are: Single Value: A single value chart shows the current value of a metric or an expression. It does not depend on the time range of the dashboard, but only on the data resolution and rollup function of the chart List: A list chart shows the values of a metric or an expression for each dimension value in a table format. It does not depend on the time range of the dashboard, but only on the data resolution and rollup function of the chart2 Therefore, the correct answer is A and D. To learn more about how to use different chart visualization types in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can refer to this documentation https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/charts.html#Single-value https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/charts.html#List https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/charts.html

• Question 15:

  Which of the following statements is true of detectors created from a chart on a custom dashboard?

  A. Changes made to the chart affect the detector.

  B. Changes made to the detector affect the chart.

  C. The alerts will show up in the team landing page.

  D. The detector is automatically linked to the chart.

  Correct Answer: D

  The correct answer is D. The detector is automatically linked to the chart. When you create a detector from a chart on a custom dashboard, the detector is automatically linked to the chart. This means that you can see the detector status and alerts on the chart, and you can access the detector settings from the chart menu. You can also unlink the detector from the chart if you want to Changes made to the chart do not affect the detector, and changes made to the detector do not affect the chart. The detector and the chart are independent entities that have their own settings and parameters. However, if you change the metric or dimension of the chart, you might lose the link to the detector The alerts generated by the detector will show up in the Alerts page, where you can view, manage, and acknowledge them. You can also see them on the team landing page if you assign the detector to a team To learn more about how to create and link detectors from charts on custom dashboards, you can refer to this documentation. https://docs.splunk.com/observability/alerts-detectors-notifications/link-detectors-to- charts.html https://docs.splunk.com/observability/alerts-detectors-notifications/view- manage-alerts.html

• Question 16:

  A customer is experiencing an issue where their detector is not sending email notifications but is generating alerts within the Splunk Observability UI. Which of the below is the root cause?

  A. The detector has an incorrect alert rule.

  B. The detector has an incorrect signal,

  C. The detector is disabled.

  D. The detector has a muting rule.

  Correct Answer: D

  The most likely root cause of the issue is D. The detector has a muting rule. A muting rule is a way to temporarily stop a detector from sending notifications for certain alerts, without disabling the detector or changing its alert conditions. A muting rule can be useful when you want to avoid alert noise during planned maintenance, testing, or other situations where you expect the metrics to deviate from normal When a detector has a muting rule, it will still generate alerts within the Splunk Observability UI, but it will not send email notifications or any other types of notifications that you have configured for the detector. You can see if a detector has a muting rule by looking at the Muting Rules tab on the detector page. You can also create, edit, or delete muting rules from there To learn more about how to use muting rules in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can refer to this documentation.

• Question 17:

  Which of the following is optional, but highly recommended to include in a datapoint?

  A. Metric name

  B. Timestamp

  C. Value

  D. Metric type

  Correct Answer: D

  The correct answer is D. Metric type. A metric type is an optional, but highly recommended field that specifies the kind of measurement that a datapoint represents. For example, a metric type can be gauge, counter, cumulative counter, or histogram. A metric type helps Splunk Observability Cloud to interpret and display the data correctly To learn more about how to send metrics to Splunk Observability Cloud, you can refer to this documentation. https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/metrics.html#Metric-types https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/metrics.html

• Question 18:

  Which of the following are accurate reasons to clone a detector? (select all that apply)

  A. To modify the rules without affecting the existing detector.

  B. To reduce the amount of billed TAPM for the detector.

  C. To add an additional recipient to the detector's alerts.

  D. To explore how a detector was created without risk of changing it.

  Correct Answer: AD

  The correct answers are A and D.

  According to the Splunk Test Blueprint - O11y Cloud Metrics User document, one of the alerting concepts that is covered in the exam is detectors and alerts. Detectors are the objects that define the conditions for generating alerts, and alerts

  are the notifications that are sent when those conditions are met.

  The Splunk O11y Cloud Certified Metrics User Track document states that one of the recommended courses for preparing for the exam is Alerting with Detectors, which covers how to create, modify, and manage detectors and alerts. In the

  Alerting with Detectors course, there is a section on Cloning Detectors, which explains that cloning a detector creates a copy of the detector with all its settings, rules, and alert recipients. The document also provides some reasons why you

  might want to clone a detector, such as:

  To modify the rules without affecting the existing detector. This can be useful if you want to test different thresholds or conditions before applying them to the original detector.

  To explore how a detector was created without risk of changing it. This can be helpful if you want to learn from an existing detector or use it as a template for creating a new one.

  Therefore, based on these documents, we can conclude that A and D are accurate reasons to clone a detector. B and C are not valid reasons because:

  Cloning a detector does not reduce the amount of billed TAPM for the detector. TAPM stands for Tracked Active Problem Metric, which is a metric that has been alerted on by a detector. Cloning a detector does not change the number of

  TAPM that are generated by the original detector or the clone. Cloning a detector does not add an additional recipient to the detector's alerts. Cloning a detector copies the alert recipients from the original detector, but it does not add any new

  ones. To add an additional recipient to a detector's alerts, you need to edit the alert settings of the detector.

• Question 19:

  What Pod conditions does the Analyzer panel in Kubernetes Navigator monitor? (select all that apply)

  A. Not Scheduled

  B. Unknown

  C. Failed

  D. Pending

  Correct Answer: ABCD

  The Pod conditions that the Analyzer panel in Kubernetes Navigator monitors are: Not Scheduled: This condition indicates that the Pod has not been assigned to a Node yet. This could be due to insufficient resources, node affinity, or other scheduling constraints Unknown: This condition indicates that the Pod status could not be obtained or is not known by the system. This could be due to communication errors, node failures, or other unexpected situations Failed: This condition indicates that the Pod has terminated in a failure state. This could be due to errors in the application code, container configuration, or external factors Pending: This condition indicates that the Pod has been accepted by the system, but one or more of its containers has not been created or started yet. This could be due to image pulling, volume mounting, or network issues Therefore, the correct answer is A, B, C, and D. To learn more about how to use the Analyzer panel in Kubernetes Navigator, you can refer to this documentation. https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/pod-lifecycle/#pod-phase https://docs.splunk.com/observability/infrastructure/monitor/k8s-nav.html#Analyzer-panel

• Question 20:

  An SRE creates a new detector to receive an alert when server latency is higher than 260 milliseconds. Latency below 260 milliseconds is healthy for their service. The SRE creates a New Detector with a Custom Metrics Alert Rule for latency and sets a Static Threshold alert condition at 260ms.

  How can the number of alerts be reduced?

  A. Adjust the threshold.

  B. Adjust the Trigger sensitivity. Duration set to 1 minute.

  C. Adjust the notification sensitivity. Duration set to 1 minute.

  D. Choose another signal.

  Correct Answer: B

  According to the Splunk O11y Cloud Certified Metrics User Track document1, trigger sensitivity is a setting that determines how long a signal must remain above or below a threshold before an alert is triggered. By default, trigger sensitivity is set to Immediate, which means that an alert is triggered as soon as the signal crosses the threshold. This can result in a lot of alerts, especially if the signal fluctuates frequently around the threshold value. To reduce the number of alerts, you can adjust the trigger sensitivity to a longer duration, such as 1 minute, 5 minutes, or 15 minutes. This means that an alert is only triggered if the signal stays above or below the threshold for the specified duration. This can help filter out noise and focus on more persistent issues.