What Is Splunk?Technically speaking, Splunk is a time-series indexer, but to simplify things we will just say that it is a product that takes care of the three Vs very well. Splunk started as a product designed to process machine data I think Splunk has three main functionalities:Data collection, which can be done for static data or by monitoring changes and additions to files or complete directories on a real time basis. Data can also be collected from network ports or directly from programs or scripts. Additionally, Splunk can connect with relational databases to collect, insert or update data.Data indexing, in which the collected data is broken down into events, roughly equivalent to database records, or simply lines of data. Then the data is processed and a high performance index is updated, which points to the stored data.Search and analysis. Using the Splunk Processing Language, you are able to search for data and manipulate it to obtain the desired results, whether in the form of reports or alerts. The results can be presented as individual events, tables, or charts.Splunk is also a platform that can be used to develop applications to handle big data analytics. It has a powerful set of APIs that can be used with Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, and C#.