Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect Practice Test

What is the best approach to ensure high availability for searchable data?

1. Increasing the search factor in the cluster

2. Increasing the replication factor in the cluster

3. Increasing the number of search heads in the cluster

4. Increasing the number of CPUs on the indexers in the cluster

The correct answer is: Increasing the search factor in the cluster

Focusing on high availability for searchable data within a Splunk cluster primarily revolves around ensuring that the data is consistently accessible and resilient in the face of potential failures. The most effective method here is to increase the search factor. The search factor determines how many copies of the searchable data are maintained across the indexers in a cluster. By increasing the search factor, you ensure that even if one or more indexers go down, there are still sufficient copies of the data available on other indexers for users to conduct searches. This redundancy directly contributes to high availability, making it less likely that data will become inaccessible due to hardware failures or maintenance activities. While increasing the replication factor does enhance data durability and recovery processes, it does not directly impact the availability of searchable data as it relates to the number of replicas available for search. Increasing the number of search heads may improve query processing and load balancing but doesn't inherently increase the availability of the underlying indexed data. On the other hand, augmenting the number of CPUs on the indexers might enhance performance but does not address the issue of data redundancy which is crucial for maintaining high availability. Thus, increasing the search factor is the most relevant and effective way to ensure that searchable data remains consistently accessible, providing the highest