Splunk Cloud Migration Summary
Splunk Cloud Migration Architect
The Professional Services Architect is responsible for examining the customer’s existing Splunk environment to assist the Project Manager in the development of a migration plan and schedule. Duties include executing Splunk health checks; running the Splunk Cloud Migration Assessment app checks; developing solutions for issues that may prevent or impair the customer’s migration to Splunk Cloud; identifying resources necessary to support migration; and integrating additional Splunk resources with the customer to support successful migration to Splunk Cloud.
Effort Completed
- Conducted Splunk platform health check
- Provided solutions to identified data hygiene issues
- Reviewed environment settings for compliance with Splunk best practices
- Finished Monitoring Console configuration to support Splunk Cloud Migration Assessment
- Completed Splunk Cloud Migration Assessment
- Assisted with configuration of the SCMA app
- Collected results of automated assessment checks
- Reviewed Splunk infrastructure documentation provided by the customer
- Delivered the Splunk Cloud Migration Assessment Report
- Assessed automated SCMA checks
- Executed manual introspection to gather additional details
- Provided summarized information regarding migration readiness
- Developed recommendations to assist the customer when preparing its Splunk environment for migration to Splunk Cloud
- Assisted the customer when implementing on-the-spot changes to prepare for migration
- Provided Splunk best practices to improve the customer’s ability to:
- Onboard new data
- Improve parsing of existing data sources
- Manage indexes, including role-based access control (RBAC) and retention policies
- Manage user roles and capabilities
- Provided guidance to assist the customer with its goal of reduced management complexity within Splunk Cloud, post migration
- Developed recommendations for the customer to follow when determining how to redesign the existing index strategy
- Reviewed saved searches, dashboards and alerts to help the customer determine what knowledge objects (KOs) to migrate, consolidate, or discard
- Completed initial Splunk app and add-on inspection to facilitate app migration
- Gathered apps and add-ons from the search and indexing tier
- Consolidated apps per Splunk tier
- Packaged apps for automated Splunk AppInspect processing
- Delivered prepared apps to the customer
- Reviewed the AppInspect findings with the customer and provided guidance to assist with application prep prior to migration
Business Concerns Addressed
Box, Inc. sought to migrate multiple divisions from on-prem Splunk infrastructure to Splunk Cloud in an efficient method that allowed Box to introduce improvements to Splunk performance, utilization, and achieve reduced management complexity. Data hygiene improvements supported Box’s ability to index data that is compliant with the Splunk Common Information Model, thereby allowing Box to make use of pre-built and custom datamodels to achieve more efficient resource utilization and improved search performance. App and index consolidation reduced the effort required by Box engineers to manage Splunk while avoiding negative impacts to its user base.
Conclusion
Box, Inc. received expert guidance and advice to help its engineers to prepare the Splunk infrastructure for migration to Splunk Cloud. The resultant Splunk Cloud Migration Assessment Report and migration project schedule met Box’s requirement to implement optimizations while preserving its historical data and existing processes. The project schedule included Box scheduling expectations and limitations to ensure the plan is executable within the allocated time and properly resourced by both Box and Splunk.