Big data: the term itself suggests a large amount of data. Big data can be defined as high-volume, high-velocity, and high-variety information. Data is sometimes also referred to as logs generated from machines that can be used for the purpose of operations, engineering, business insight, analytics and prediction, and so on as the case may be.

Now, as we have a large amount of data, there is a need for a platform or tool that can be used to create visualizations and derive insights and patterns to make informed business decisions beforehand. To overcome all these challenges of big data, Splunk came into the picture. Splunk is a big data tool that generates insights and reveals patterns, trends, and associations from machine data. It is a powerful and robust big data tool used to derive real-time or near real-time insights, and it enables you to take informed corrective measures.

Splunk can be put to use for data generated from any source and available in a human readable format. As Splunk is a feature-rich tool, it becomes difficult for a Splunk user to start and make the best use of Splunk right away. This book takes the reader through a complete understanding of making the best and most efficient use of Splunk for machine data analytics and visualization. The book covers everything from which type of data can be uploaded to how to do it in an efficient way. It also covers creating applications and add-ons on Splunk, learning analytics commands, and learning visualizations and customizations as per one's requirements. The book also talks about how Splunk can be tweaked to make the best out of Splunk, along with how it can be integrated with R for analytics and Tableau for visualization.

This step-by-step comprehensive guide to Splunk will help readers understand Splunk's capabilities, thus enabling you to make the most efficient and best use of Splunk for big data.