Using Atlas Assessment (Version 2)
Introduction
Atlas Assessment is designed to evaluate and identify common issues within Splunk deployments. Developed by Kinney Group, this tool streamlines the process of identifying and addressing common issues in a Splunk environment. An assessment is designed to run a set of checks against your Splunk environment.
Quick Start
An assessment is initiated by clicking the Run Assessment button. When the Assessment process begins it will gather the information it needs, including Splunk instance details, environment configurations, and more. Atlas Assessment employs robust detection mechanisms to identify issues and then presents its findings and relevant recommendations back to the user.
When you run an assessment you will be asked to select a time range. It is strongly recommended that you chose a time range that covers times when your Splunk system is being used and then run an assessment at that interval. The default time range is 7 days.
An Assessment will run in the background so you can navigate away from the user interface and it will continue to run. You can only run one assessment at a time.
Assessment results are rated based on best practices set forth by Splunk or from the best practices recommended by the Atlas platform. An assessment will rate each check in one of three categories. The three categories are good, warning, and alert.
- Pass indicates that the check returned values within acceptable thresholds.
- Warning indicates that the check results are trending in a negative direction and should be evaluated.
- Alert indicates that the check has determined that you are outside of recommended thresholds and action should be taken to address the issue.
Ensure you are running Atlas Assessment as a Splunk administrator for optimal results.
Evaluation Categories
Atlas Assessment will execute a series of checks against your Splunk in the following categories:
Splunk Adoption: Measures how well your Splunk environment is being adopted by your user community.
Data Source Integrity: Evaluates aspects of the data sources that are coming into your environment and how well they are managed.
System Performance: Evaluates the health of common system performance items.
License Utilization: Checks how your data is being utilized by your users with respect to your license capacity.
Search Performance: Evaluates the health of your search scheduler to identify common issues that could be negatively impacting the performance of your Splunk environment.
Running an Assessment and Evaluating the Results
Executing an Assessment is initiated by clicking the Run Assessment button at the top of the page. Once the process is underway, the assessment will execute a series of searches in the background and evaluate the results. It will then compare those results to the thresholds set forth by the assessment tool. Only one assessment can be executed at a time. A user can navigate away from the user interface while an assessment is running and it will continue to run in the background. If an assessment is already running, anyone who navigates to the Atlas Assessment user interface, the Run Assessment button will be disabled until the current process has completed. Assessment results are displayed for the most recently executed assessment.
Click the Run Assessment button on the top of the interface.
When the assessment process starts, a red circle will appear in the button that can be used to cancel the process at anytime.
As the assessment process completes checks the icons will appear with the results being displayed for each check.
The table view allows you to filter and sort the assessment results.
When an assessment result is available clicking on a result in the table will bring up a modal with a description of the item that was assessed and the associated rating.
If there is an Atlas related solution available for the check, the user will be able to click on the "A" icon on the modal to learn more about how Atlas can help address the issue that was identified.
Splunk Environment Information Collection
Similar to running an Assessment, you can also execute a process that will gather common information that is useful to know in many Splunk environments. You can access this process by navigating to the Environment Info tab in the navigation bar. Use the following steps to complete the process:
Click the Run Searches button at the top of the page.
The process will begin and will run in the background.
Once the process has completed, the values that can be determined will be displayed in the table. This process can be run multiple times.
IMPORTANT: The information collected in this process is not shared or sent outside of your Splunk environment.
If you want to see how the Atlas platform can help you save money, click on the View ROI Calculator button in the top right corner of the interface. This will take the values determined in the environment gathering process, and automatically plug them into the Atlas ROI Calculator.