Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin Practice Test

Can you use wildcards * and ... in the whitelist and blacklist for event inputs in Splunk?

1. Yes, always

2. No, never

3. Only for Windows events

4. Only in specific configurations

The correct answer is: Only for Windows events

In Splunk, wildcards can be a crucial tool for defining patterns when managing event inputs. Whitelisting and blacklisting allow you to specify which events to include or exclude during data ingestion, and wildcards enhance this capability. The correct understanding regarding the use of wildcards in whitelisting and blacklisting is that certain limitations apply based on the type of events being processed. Specifically, wildcards can indeed be utilized for Windows events in a way that allows for greater flexibility in managing the ingestion of these data types. The wildcard character * can be used to represent any sequence of characters, while ... can serve to provide even broader matching capabilities. In contrast, the ability to use wildcards may not be universally applicable across all data types or configurations, particularly for non-Windows events or in specific contexts of data collection. Therefore, the assertion that wildcards are exclusively usable for Windows events highlights the critical nuances that exist in Splunk’s handling of data ingestion. This indicates that while wildcards enhance the ability to manage event inputs, they do not uniformly apply to all event types or configurations, aligning with the complexity of the data and the configuration settings that may apply in diverse Splunk environments.