I’ve had this topic come up in several technical conversations lately, so I thought I would blog about it now.

Situation: You have two different source types containing common key field values, but the actual name of the field itself is different within each of the source types.

Question: How do you produce a report within Splunk that correlates all of these fields values together under one normalized field name?

Answer: Use the new FIELDALIAS and EXTRACT features included with Splunk 4.0 to normalize the field name at search-time.

Example: Let’s suppose you have two different types of call detail records, each containing a number that represents the total duration in seconds that someone is on a phone call.

One CDR event looks like this:

TELCOE,2.1,7e197787-655330a9-7a458301-70845177@12.13.20.20,,0,,H,,S,,sip:7622550@127.10.15.17:5050, sip:5558889999@120.10.20.20:55555,TELCO:Dallas,TX,0,sip:7622555@110.130.52.25:5050,NORTH:NORTH,200,0
,1,0,1,0,08/02/2009:05:03:21,08/02/2009:02:03:22,92,UNKNOWN,0,0

and the other CDR record looks like this:

TIME=20090802104826865|CHAN:332|SESSIONID:100102345|CALLDURATION:93|CALLINGNUM:5558431297|
CALLEDNUM:5559903894|UNIQID:8948373827100002938847889873474893

Now, let’s take a look at the Splunk configuration files to index these source types and extract the call duration values out into fields.

inputs.conf
[monitor:///$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/cdr/logs/CDR.txt]
sourcetype= cdr_log

[monitor:///$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/cdr/logs/cdr2.txt]
sourcetype= cdr2_log

props.conf
[cdr_log]
EXTRACT-calldur = ^.*?:\d\d:\d\d:\d\d,(?<callDuration>\d+),\w+,\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+,

[cdr2_log]
REPORT-cdr2 = cdr2-kvpairs

transforms.conf
[cdr2-kvpairs]
DELIMS = “|”, “:”

After demonstrating the amazing features and capabilities of Splunk to numerous clients over the past couple years, I find that people still perceive it to be a very disruptive technology. So much so, it’s still difficult for some to truly understand the magic of Splunk.

They ask me “How is it that I can feed Splunk any kind of IT data I want, log files, SNMP traps, alerts, configuration files, xml, whatever, and know it will be indexed correctly?”

The answer is one of most powerful features of Splunk called Universal Indexing and, hopefully by the time you finish reading this article, you will have a better understanding of what that is and why it’s so powerful.

To start down that path to understanding, I would like you to think about Yoda.

Yeah, that’s right, Yoda from the Star Wars movies. You know, he’s that short funny-looking wrinkly green muppet character that speaks in a severely mixed-up manner. Remember him now?

Now what does Yoda have to do with Universal Indexing, you ask? Well, it’s not so much about Yoda, really, as it is about how Yoda talks.

Happy New Year and thanks to everyone who has been subscribing to my blog recently. I greatly appreciate it!

Every week people ask me to show them how to use Splunk to stitch together multiple events that might exist in different locations within different sources because, from an IT perspective, they are considered to be part of larger transaction groups. They tell me they want to know how to do this because the ability to trend against transitively-related events becomes very powerful in helping them understand the reality of IT operations and how efficiencies can be increased and costs can be more quickly and significantly reduced.

I thought I would share a quick example of how to do this using the transaction command.

Let’s start with a couple sample user activity log files containing some events that are related by multiple keys. Take a moment to study the two following sample activity log files and notice how the user and session key values are related between the files.

That’s right! It’s “on fire” folks! Hotter than the sun! Burning its way into the thoughts and minds and data centers across the world.

Unfortunately, what I wanted to talk about today is not related to how hot Splunk is, but rather a very special and sometimes misunderstood character called “the pipe”. For most of us tech geek types, the pipe is our friend. We use it all the time at the command-line to make efficient use of our tools and our time. For non-techie folks, it may be more mysterious or intimidating concept, so I felt it might be a good topic to discuss and demonstrate just what it is and how to use it in the Splunk search box.

Also known as the vertical bar character, the pipe (|) allows you to create simple yet powerful ad-hoc Splunk searches. You might think of it as if it were an actual pipe where things flow into one end and then flow back out the opposite end. Within the context of Splunk searches, the “things” that flow in and out of the pipe are your IT events.

…actually a couple ideas for songs about Splunk have made their way into my geeky little brain since my last blog post. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying…”Hey Maverick, the world doesn’t need another nerdy song about an IT Search Platform.” My natural response is, you’re probably right, but I can’t help myself. I’m a nerd, a songwriter, I love Splunk: I have no choice!

So where’s the mp3, dude?!

Truth is, I am just too damn busy these days to spend time on it. That is one of the reasons why I haven’t posted a new blog entry since September of last year. Turns out the demand for Splunk has increased significantly since then, which means I am traveling more now, giving more Splunk demos and presentations, and assisting more companies with their Splunk evaluations than ever before. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing songs, but nothing is more satisfying than traveling across Midwest America to show off a product as cool as Splunk.

And when I say “travel”, boy do I mean “TRAVEL”!