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Objective 4.2

Enterprise Certified Architect

Identify disk storage requirements

Objective 4.2 sits in Infrastructure Planning: Resource Planning, which carries 7% of the Enterprise Certified Architect exam. The questions below are original, written from the official objective title above, and each explanation cites the Splunk page it rests on.

Objective title verbatim from the official objectives. Splunk exam page ↗

A worked example

Shown solved, with the whole explanation open: this is what every question here carries.

4-2Infrastructure Planning: Resource Planning

While your indexer ingests data, one or more splunk-optimize processes run intermittently in the background. What do they do?

Replicates bucketsReplication is coordinated by the cluster manager.
Deletes old bucketsBucket removal happens at the end of the retention lifecycle.
Merges index filesCorrect · your answerCorrect.
Compresses raw dataRaw data is compressed as it is written.

Correct.

Checked against help.splunk.com, August 2026

Concept

Many small index files make a search do more work than one merged file. Running the merge intermittently is what keeps search efficient as data lands.

Why C

Splunk states that while the indexer is indexing data, one or more instances of the splunk-optimize process run intermittently, merging index files together to optimize performance when searching the data.

Source

While the indexer is indexing data, one or more instances of the splunk-optimize process will run intermittently, merging index files together to optimize performance when searching the data.

Splunk Docs: Optimize indexes, checked August 2026
#performance#optimization

Now you: objective 4.2 questions

No account needed. The explanation opens when you answer.

Sample question 1 of 3

4-2Infrastructure Planning: Resource Planning

On your busiest indexer, splunk-optimize is running far less often than it should. What is the consequence?

Sample question 2 of 3

4-2Infrastructure Planning: Resource Planning

You notice a warm bucket holding more than 25 tsidx files and wonder why nothing has merged them. Which buckets does splunk-optimize run on by itself?

Sample question 3 of 3

4-2Infrastructure Planning: Resource Planning

You trace a short CPU spike on an indexer to the splunk-optimize process. What is that process's CPU profile?

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Read the sources

These are the official pages the questions above cite. Reading them is studying the objective from the primary source, which is what the explanations point you toward anyway.

More objectives in Infrastructure Planning: Resource Planning