Skip to main content

Splunk

Reading time: 0 minute(s) (0 words)

Splunk provides software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated data via a Web-style interface. Splunk-Nobl9 integration allows users to enter their metrics using the Splunk Processing Language (SPL).

Splunk parameters and supported features in Nobl9
General support:
Release channel: Stable, Beta
Connection method: Agent, Direct
Replay and SLI Analyzer: Historical data limit 30 days
Event logs: Supported
Query checker: Not supported
Query parameters retrieval: Supported
Timestamp cache persistence: Supported
Query parameters:
Query interval: 1 min
Query delay: 5 min
Jitter: 20 sec
Timeout: 30 sec
Agent details and minimum required versions for supported features:
Plugin name: n9splunk
Query delay environment variable: SPLUNK_QUERY_DELAY
Replay and SLI Analyzer: 0.65.0
Query parameters retrieval: 0.73.2
Timestamp cache persistence: 0.65.0
Custom HTTP headers: 0.89.1-beta
Additional notes:
Self-signed Splunk Enterprise certificates are not supported. Nobl9 requires successful certificate validation for any Splunk Enterprise instance using TLS, and self-signed certificates cannot pass this validation

Creating SLOs with Splunk​

Nobl9 Web​

  1. Navigate to Service Level Objectives.

  2. Click .

  3. Select a Service.
    It will be the location for your SLO in Nobl9.

  4. Select Splunk as the data source for your SLO.

  5. Modify Period for Historical Data Retrieval, when necessary.
    • This value defines how far back in the past your data will be retrieved when replaying your SLO based on Splunk.
    • A longer period can extend the data loading time for your SLO.
    • Must be a positive whole number up to the maximum period value you've set when adding the Splunk data source.

  6. Select the Metric type:

    • Threshold Metric, where a single time series is evaluated against a threshold.

    • Ratio Metric, where you enter two time series for a good and total counter.

    • Ratio Metric, where you can select the query structure: Single query or Two queries.

      • Using the Single query option, you enter one query to compare both time series: for the good and total counters.

      • The Two queries option allows you to enter two time series to compare—a count of good requests and total requests.

      For the ratio metrics, select the Data Count Method:

      • Non-incremental: counts incoming metric values one-by-one. So the resulting SLO graph is pike-shaped.
      • Incremental: counts the incoming metric values incrementally, adding every next value to previous values. It results in a constantly increasing SLO graph.

  7. Define the Query. It must be in the Splunk Search Processing Language and meet the following requirements:

    • Every query must contain n9 fields, and Splunk must return their values in the dataset:
    The required n9 values per metric type
    ThresholdTwo-query ratioSingle-query ratioDescription
    n9timen9timen9timeA Unix timestamp
    n9valuen9valuenot requiredFloat number
    not requirednot requiredn9goodFloat number
    not requirednot requiredn9totalFloat number

    • The query can retrieve data from either Events or Metrics Splunk indexes.

    • Nobl9 validates the queries to contain the respective n9 field along with index= with the value.

    • Dataset time ranges are segmented into 15-second chunks and aggregated as shown in the table:

      Dataset aggregation
      ThresholdRatio incrementalRatio non-incremental
      AverageMaximum valueSum of values

SLI values for good and total
When choosing the query for the ratio SLI (countMetrics), keep in mind that the values ​​resulting from that query for both good and total:
  • Must be positive.
  • While we recommend using integers, fractions are also acceptable.
    • If using fractions, we recommend them to be larger than 1e-4 = 0.0001.
  • Shouldn't be larger than 1e+20.
  1. Define the Time window for your SLO:
  2. Configure the Error budget calculation method and Objectives:
    • Occurrences method counts good attempts against the count of total attempts.
    • Time Slices method measures how many good minutes were achieved (when a system operates within defined boundaries) during a time window.
    • You can define up to 12 objectives for an SLO.

      • Similar threshold values for objectives
      To use similar threshold values for different objectives in your SLO, we recommend differentiating them by setting varying decimal points for each objective.
      For example, if you want to use threshold value 1 for two objectives, set it to 1.0000001 for the first objective and to 1.0000002 for the second one.
      Learn more about threshold value uniqueness.
  3. Add the Display name, Name, and other settings for your SLO:
    • Name identifies your SLO in Nobl9. After you save the SLO, its name becomes read-only.
      Use only lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes.
    • Create composite SLO: with this option selected, you create a composite SLO 1.0. Composite SLOs 1.0 are deprecated. They're fully operable; however, we encourage you to create new composite SLOs 2.0.
      You can create composite SLOs 2.0 with sloctl using the provided template. Alternatively, you can create a composite SLO 2.0 with Nobl9 Terraform provider.
    • Set Notifications on data. With it, Nobl9 will notify you in the cases when SLO won't be reporting data for more than 15 minutes.
    • Add alert policies, labels, and links, if required.
      Up to 20 items of each type per SLO is allowed.
  4. Click CREATE SLO.

    5. SLO configuration use case
    Check the SLO configuration use case for a real-life SLO example.

sloctl​

Sample Splunk threshold SLO
apiVersion: n9/v1alpha
kind: SLO
metadata:
  name: api-server-slo
  displayName: API Server SLO
  project: default
  labels:
    area:
      - latency
      - slow-check
    env:
      - prod
      - dev
    region:
      - us
      - eu
    team:
      - green
      - sales
  annotations:
    area: latency
    env: prod
    region: us
    team: sales
spec:
  description: Example Splunk SLO
  indicator:
    metricSource:
      name: splunk
      project: default
      kind: Agent
  budgetingMethod: Occurrences
  objectives:
    - displayName: Good response (200)
      value: 200
      name: ok
      target: 0.95
      rawMetric:
        query:
          splunk:
            query: >-
              index=* source=udp:5072 sourcetype=syslog status<400 | bucket
              _time span=1m | stats avg(response_time) as n9value by _time |
              rename _time as n9time | fields n9time n9value
      op: lte
      primary: true
  service: api-server
  timeWindows:
    - unit: Month
      count: 1
      isRolling: false
      calendar:
        startTime: 2022-12-01T00:00:00.000Z
        timeZone: UTC
  alertPolicies:
    - fast-burn-5x-for-last-10m
  attachments:
    - url: https://docs.nobl9.com
      displayName: Nobl9 Documentation
  anomalyConfig:
    noData:
      alertMethods:
        - name: slack-notification
          project: default

Query tips, requirements, and samples​

  • For the best experience, keep query run time short enough to return results within 1–2 minutes. For example, when you query data for the last 15 minutes, the response should return within less than one minute.
    You can check query duration using Splunk's Search Job Inspector or learn quick tips for query optimization.

  • Agent version requirements for single-query ratio metrics

    NameStableBeta
    Single-query ratio metric0.80.00.80.0-beta
    Replay and SLI Analyzer0.82.20.82.0-beta

  • Every query must contain n9 fields, and Splunk must return their values in the dataset. The n9 fields are as follows:

    The required n9 values per metric type
    ThresholdTwo-query ratioSingle-query ratioDescription
    n9timen9timen9timeA Unix timestamp
    n9valuen9valuenot requiredFloat number
    not requirednot requiredn9goodFloat number
    not requirednot requiredn9totalFloat number

    Use Splunk field extractions to return values with the exact names. The n9time is the actual time, and the n9value, n9good, and n9total are metric values.

    Typically, you rename _time to n9time and the field containing metric values (for example, response_time)—to the n9value, n9good, or n9total.

    For example,

    index=myserver-events source=udp:5072 sourcetype=syslog response_time>0
    | rename _time as n9time, response_time as n9value
    | fields n9time n9value
    Query frequency

    The Splunk query is by default executed once per minute, returning the values found in the fields n9time and n9value. Ensure your hardware can support the query frequency or consider increasing the Query Interval.

  • The query can retrieve data from either Events or Metrics Splunk indexes.

    • Nobl9 validates the queries to contain the respective n9 field along with index= with the value.

    • Dataset time ranges are segmented into 15-second chunks and aggregated. The aggregation is as follows:

      Dataset aggregation
      ThresholdRatio incrementalRatio non-incremental
      AverageMaximum valueSum of values

  • The index attribute ("index=index_name") lets avoiding long-running queries.

    • The query can retrieve data from both the Events and Metrics indexes.
    • To retrieve Metrics data, use the | mstats command.
    • To retrieve data from the Events and Metrics indexes, enter the SPL query and select a proper index: index=_metrics or index=_events, where _metrics is the name of the metrics index, and _events is the name of the events index.

  • Sample query for the Events index:

search index=_events sourcetype=syslog status<400
| bucket _time span=1m
| stats count as n9value by _time
| rename _time as n9time
| fields n9time n9value
  • Sample query for the Metrics index:
| mstats avg("my.metric") as n9value WHERE index=_metrics span=15s
| rename _time as n9time
| fields n9time n9value
  • Sample single query for the Metrics index:
| mstats avg("spl.intr.resource_usage.IOWait.data.avg_cpu_pct") as n9good WHERE index="_metrics" span=15s
| join type=left _time [
| mstats avg("spl.intr.resource_usage.IOWait.data.max_cpus_pct") as n9total WHERE index="_metrics" span=15s]
| rename _time as n9time
| fields n9time n9good n9total

Querying Splunk server​

The Nobl9 agent leverages Splunk Enterprise API parameters. It pulls data at a per-minute interval from the Splunk server.

API rate limits for the Nobl9 agent​

Splunk Enterprise API rate limits are configured by its administrators. Rate limits must be high enough to accommodate searches from the Nobl9 agent. The Nobl9 agent makes one query per minute per unique query.

Read more in Maximum and actual search concurrency calculations | Splunk community.

Concurrent searches

For the best results, the number of concurrent searches must be about the same as the number of SLIs you have for this data source.

Number of events returned from Splunk queries​

Supported search SPL command searches within indexed events. The total number of events can be large, and a query without specific conditions, such as search sourcetype=*, returns all indexed events. A large number of data points sent to Nobl9 could disrupt the system’s performance. Therefore, there is a hard limit of 4 events per minute.

File-based queries and Splunk disk quota​

If you’re using file-based queries (the inputlookup function) instead of index-based queries, your query might not work as expected. Due to the difference in jitter configuration between Splunk and Nobl9, you might need to increase your Splunk disk quota for the inputlookup function to work properly.

To determine the appropriate disk quota size for your Splunk account, we recommend the following steps:

  1. Go to the Splunk UI and navigate to Activity > Jobs.
  2. Filter the logs by the user you currently use in Nobl9 App.
  3. Execute requests at 29-second intervals to gather all logs from the corresponding cycle.
  4. Sum the sizes of all requests from the list to determine the minimum disk quota. It is important to add a buffer to this number for safety.
  5. Once you have created more SLOs, adjust the disk quota accordingly.

We suggest increasing the quota to 2GB to resolve the issue. However, it’s important to note that the final disk quota size will depend on the data being queried.

Known limitations​

Query limitations:

For a more in-depth look, consult additional resources:
REST accessSplunk docsCreate auth tokensSplunk docsAgent metricsAgentCreating SLOs via TerraformTerraformCreating agents via TerraformTerraform
Last updated on
On this page