SPLK-4001 Questions and Answers

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.

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 MTS1. Splunk Observability Cloud has a limit of 36 unique dimensions per MTS2. If the limit of allowed dimensions is exceeded for an MTS, the additional dimensions are dropped and not stored or indexed by Observability Cloud2. This means that the data point is still ingested, but without the extra dimensions. Therefore, option A is correct.

The correct answer is C. 401 (UNAUTHORIZED).

According to the web search results, a 401 (UNAUTHORIZED) error message is indicative that there is a misconfigured realm or access token when installing OpenTelemetry Collector1. A 401 (UNAUTHORIZED) error message means that the request was not authorized by the server due to invalid credentials. A realm is a parameter that specifies the scope of protection for a resource, such as a Splunk Observability Cloud endpoint. An access token is a credential that grants access to a resource, such as a Splunk Observability Cloud API. If the realm or the access token is misconfigured, the request to install OpenTelemetry Collector will be rejected by the server with a 401 (UNAUTHORIZED) error message.

Option A is incorrect because a 403 (NOT ALLOWED) error message is not indicative that there is a misconfigured realm or access token when installing OpenTelemetry Collector. A 403 (NOT ALLOWED) error message means that the request was authorized by the server but not allowed due to insufficient permissions. Option B is incorrect because a 404 (NOT FOUND) error message is not indicative that there is a misconfigured realm or access token when installing OpenTelemetry Collector. A 404 (NOT FOUND) error message means that the request was not found by the server due to an invalid URL or resource. Option D is incorrect because a 503 (SERVICE UNREACHABLE) error message is not indicative that there is a misconfigured realm or access token when installing OpenTelemetry Collector. A 503 (SERVICE UNREACHABLE) error message means that the server was unable to handle the request due to temporary overload or maintenance.

The correct answer is D. Each data marker represents the sum of API calls in the hour leading up to the data marker.

The metric demo.trans.count is a cumulative counter metric, which means that it represents the total number of API calls since the start of the measurement. A cumulative counter metric can be used to measure the rate of change or the sum of events over a time period1

The chart below shows the metric demo.trans.count with a one-hour rollup and a line chart type. A rollup is a way to aggregate data points over a specified time interval, such as one hour, to reduce the number of data points displayed on a chart. A line chart type connects the data points with a line to show the trend of the metric over time2

Each data marker on the chart represents the sum of API calls in the hour leading up to the data marker. This is because the rollup function for cumulative counter metrics is sum by default, which means that it adds up all the data points in each time interval. For example, the data marker at 10:00 AM shows the sum of API calls from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM3

To learn more about how to use metrics and charts in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can refer to these documentations123.

1: https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/metrics.html#Metric-types 2: https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/charts.html#Data-resolution-and-rollups-in-charts 3: https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/gdi/metrics/charts.html#Rollup-functions-for-metric-types

The correct answer is D. gRPC (4317), SignalFx (9080), Fluentd (8006).

According to the web search results, these are the default ports for the corresponding components in the OpenTelemetry Collector. You can verify this by looking at the table of exposed ports and endpoints in the first result1. You can also see the agent and gateway configuration files in the same result for more details.

1: https://docs.splunk.com/observability/gdi/opentelemetry/exposed-endpoints.html

The alert recipients tab specifies where notification messages should be sent when alerts are triggered or cleared. The options that can be used are:

• Invoke a webhook URL. This option allows you to send a HTTP POST request to a custom URL that can perform various actions based on the alert information. For example, you can use a webhook to create a ticket in a service desk system, post a message to a chat channel, or trigger another workflow1
• Send an SMS message. This option allows you to send a text message to one or more phone numbers when an alert is triggered or cleared. You can customize the message content and format using variables and templates2
• Send to email addresses. This option allows you to send an email notification to one or more recipients when an alert is triggered or cleared. You can customize the email subject, body, and attachments using variables and templates. You can also include information from search results, the search job, and alert triggering in the email3

Therefore, the correct answer is A, C, and D.

1: https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Alert/Webhooks 2: https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Alert/SMSnotification 3: https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Alert/Emailnotification

The correct answer is A, C, and D. Organization metrics give insights into system usage, system limits, data ingested and token quotas. Organization metrics are included for free. A user can plot and alert on them like metrics they send to Splunk Observability Cloud.

Organization metrics are a set of metrics that Splunk Observability Cloud provides to help you measure your organization’s usage of the platform. They include metrics such as:

• Ingest metrics: Measure the data you’re sending to Infrastructure Monitoring, such as the number of data points you’ve sent.
• App usage metrics: Measure your use of application features, such as the number of dashboards in your organization.
• Integration metrics: Measure your use of cloud services integrated with your organization, such as the number of calls to the AWS CloudWatch API.
• Resource metrics: Measure your use of resources that you can specify limits for, such as the number of custom metric time series (MTS) you’ve created1

Organization metrics are not charged and do not count against any system limits. You can view them in built-in charts on the Organization Overview page or in custom charts using the Metric Finder. You can also create alerts based on organization metrics to monitor your usage and performance1

To learn more about how to use organization metrics in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can refer to this documentation1.

1: https://docs.splunk.com/observability/admin/org-metrics.html

The correct answer is A. Dimensions.

Dimensions are metadata in the form of key-value pairs that are sent along with the metrics at the time of ingest. They provide additional information about the metric, such as the name of the host that sent the metric, or the location of the server. Along with the metric name, they uniquely identify a metric time series (MTS)1

Changes to dimensions result in a new MTS, because they create a different combination of metric name and dimensions. For example, if you change the hostname dimension from host1 to host2, you will create a new MTS for the same metric name1

Properties, sources, and tags are other types of metadata that can be applied to existing MTSes after ingest. They do not contribute to uniquely identify an MTS, and they do not create a new MTS when changed2

To learn more about how to use metadata in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can refer to this documentation2.

1: https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/metrics-and-metadata/metrics.html#Dimensions 2: https://docs.splunk.com/Observability/metrics-and-metadata/metrics-dimensions-mts.html

According to the web search results, dashboard groups are a feature of Splunk Observability Cloud that allows you to organize and share dashboards with other users in your organization1. You can create dashboard groups based on different criteria, such as service, team, role, or topic. You can also set permissions for each dashboard group, such as who can view, edit, or manage the dashboards in the group. Dashboard groups make it possible to share a collection of charts with your entire SRE organization, or any other group of users that you want to collaborate with.

The correct answer is A. Max Delay.

Max Delay is a parameter that specifies the maximum amount of time that the analytics engine can wait for data to arrive for a specific detector. For example, if Max Delay is set to 10 minutes, the detector will wait for only a maximum of 10 minutes even if some data points have not arrived. By default, Max Delay is set to Auto, allowing the analytics engine to determine the appropriate amount of time to wait for data points1

In this case, since the customer knows that the data from the over-utilized machine can be delayed by up to 10 minutes, they can modify the Max Delay setting for the detector to 10 minutes. This will prevent the detector from firing alerts before the data points arrive, and avoid false positives or missing data1

To learn more about how to use Max Delay in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can refer to this documentation1.

1: https://docs.splunk.com/observability/alerts-detectors-notifications/detector-options.html#Max-Delay

The correct answer is B. A set of data points that all have the same metric name and list of dimensions.

A metric time series (MTS) is a collection of data points that have the same metric and the same set of dimensions. For example, the following sets of data points are in three separate MTS:

MTS1: Gauge metric cpu.utilization, dimension “hostname”: “host1” MTS2: Gauge metric cpu.utilization, dimension “hostname”: “host2” MTS3: Gauge metric memory.usage, dimension “hostname”: “host1”

A metric is a numerical measurement that varies over time, such as CPU utilization or memory usage. A dimension is a key-value pair that provides additional information about the metric, such as the hostname or the location. A data point is a combination of a metric, a dimension, a value, and a timestamp1