Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin Practice Test

How does the Splunk architecture define the role of a forwarder?

1. To store data

2. To parse data

3. To collect and forward data

4. To visualize data

The correct answer is: To collect and forward data

The role of a forwarder in Splunk architecture is crucial for data ingestion. A forwarder is responsible for collecting data from various sources and sending it to the indexer, where the data is indexed and made searchable. Forwarders can be configured to monitor specific files, directories, or logs, and they can operate on different machines within a distributed setup. Forwarders come in two types: universal forwarders and heavy forwarders. Universal forwarders are lightweight agents that primarily focus on collecting and forwarding the raw data without performing any parsing or indexing. In contrast, heavy forwarders can parse and index data before forwarding, but their primary function remains the same: to ensure that data is efficiently collected and sent to the appropriate Splunk instance for further analysis. By fulfilling this role, forwarders facilitate the ingestion of data into Splunk from multiple environments, which is essential for leveraging Splunk's capabilities to analyze and visualize the data later on.