What is our primary use case?
We use the solution mainly for security operations. We receive logs from different log sources.
What is most valuable?
The product is very easy to use. We just have to run the agent and collect the log. We don't have many delays or problems. We faced an issue once or twice when there was a network issue and when the system was rebooted. The percentage of issues is very low compared to the overall deployment. It is 0.001%.
The solution supports our organization's security and compliance monitoring very much. We rely on the platform to detect abnormalities and to perform searches. If someone brings a compliance issue, we request logs from the platform to determine whether it happened. We use the tool’s search feature and Intel's machine learning platform to conduct our analysis.
We don't face any issues in real-time monitoring. There is no latency. We have options to create our own dashboards. The GUI is very simple. It's a simple platform. It is very easy to use.
What needs improvement?
The product doesn’t have prebuilt dashboards. It would be great if the product provided prebuilt dashboards. For example, we allowed some devices into our network through VPN, but there is no dashboard to combine two log sources and understand which user has logged in. So, we created our own dashboard with the available Splunk searches.
It’d be good if the solution provided more prebuilt dashboards and released them on the app platform. Then, we can deploy the dashboards straight away. Also, if the tool provides additional dashboards, we can reduce the resources needed to develop them. Since Splunk has overall visibility all around the globe, it can give better suggestions on the dashboards that we must use and how to project the data to the management.
We faced some issues in parsing when the load was too much. If we have a 100 MB log source, 80 MB will be parsed correctly, but we face issues with 20 MB. We raised a support ticket, and the support team suggested we increase the time interval between sending the logs to the Splunk forwarder to handle the processing correctly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for two years. I am using the latest version of the solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The tool is stable enough. In my demo environment, I used my own physical machines to run it. I was able to ingest as many log sources as I wanted within the data limit, and it did not have any issues. The search is very responsive when compared to the other platforms. There was no lag.
Splunk has been supporting free text searches for two years. We can query anything out of the box without specifying any indexes. We can perform free-text queries. Usually, it takes very little time to produce the results if the data set is too small. If the data set is too large, the product suggests we finetune our search, and it provides us with hints on which indexes to specify. It has three different options: Fast mode, Push mode, and Smart mode. We can switch the modes to get results quicker. Later, we can change the mode back to do a deeper analysis.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is not an issue for SMBs and moderately big companies. When we went beyond certain limits, like 700 Gbps or 800 Gbps, we faced some issues with the engine. So, we split up the platform and diverted some of the logs into different indexes. It solved the problem. Up to 500 Gbps per day is okay. When we go beyond that, a single instance cannot handle it. We need to split it up.
This issue was only with the on-premise version. We do not face such issues in the cloud. When customers wanted to renew their subscriptions, we suggested they move to the cloud. On-premise, we have to manage our indexes and searches, but in the cloud, it's done by the vendor. It's a plug-and-play process. Splunk automatically takes care of parsing. We have more than 30 customers.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is very good. The team supported us even during the Christmas holidays. The support engineer walked us through every step. The team is always reachable. We never had issues while contacting them.
How was the initial setup?
I built some demo environments for my practice since Splunk was new to me two years ago. I used the free license. It was a pretty straightforward setup. I did not find any difficulties in setting up my lab environment. The deployment can be done within 15 minutes.
What was our ROI?
The return on investment is very good. It's very easy to use. Many of our customers decided to continue using Splunk because they have invested much in the training modules, the analysts are familiar with the tool, and it's very easy to search. Open-text queries are the best in Splunk. It is easy for our customers to perform the search. It's very lightweight compared to other solutions.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Our customers pay for the licenses. It’s bundled together in a yearly subscription.
What other advice do I have?
There are some problems in managing the tool when it exceeds certain limits. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.
*Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner