Cribl Architecture & Components 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What key capability differentiates Cribl Search from traditional SIEM search platforms?
- It provides full-text search across all Cribl Stream pipeline configurations
- It enables real-time alerting on events as they pass through Worker nodes mid-stream
- It performs federated search exclusively within Cribl Lake stored data
- It supports federated search across multiple data sources and storage systems without requiring centralized ingestion (Correct answer)
Correct answer: It supports federated search across multiple data sources and storage systems without requiring centralized ingestion
Cribl Search uses a 'search in place' model, querying data where it lives — S3, Cribl Lake, Splunk, Elastic — without forcing centralized pre-indexing.
Question 2: How does Cribl Stream support GitOps workflows for configuration management?
- By automatically committing all pipeline changes to GitHub via built-in webhooks
- By storing configuration as versioned files that can be managed in a Git repository, enabling CI/CD integration (Correct answer)
- By requiring all configuration changes to go through a pull request approval before taking effect
- By integrating with GitHub Actions to deploy pipeline changes automatically on every push
Correct answer: By storing configuration as versioned files that can be managed in a Git repository, enabling CI/CD integration
Cribl Stream's configuration is stored as JSON files that can be tracked in a Git repository, allowing teams to version, review, and roll back configurations like any other code.
Question 3: In Cribl Stream, what does the 'Data Preview' feature allow operators to do?
- View a live dashboard of all events flowing through the Worker nodes in real time
- Pre-validate destination connectivity and credentials before deploying a pipeline
- Test pipeline function behavior against sample events without sending live data to destinations (Correct answer)
- Preview scheduled reports and dashboards generated by Cribl Search
Correct answer: Test pipeline function behavior against sample events without sending live data to destinations
Data Preview lets you run sample events through pipeline functions in the UI to immediately see transformation results, without affecting live data or destinations.
Question 4: What does the Cribl Stream REST API primarily enable administrators and developers to do?
- Programmatically manage Cribl configurations, pipelines, routes, and deployments via HTTP (Correct answer)
- Directly query events stored in Cribl Lake in real time using HTTP GET requests
- Stream processed events to external dashboards without a destination connector
- Automate license renewal and subscription billing management
Correct answer: Programmatically manage Cribl configurations, pipelines, routes, and deployments via HTTP
The REST API allows external tools and automation systems to create, read, update, and delete Cribl configurations programmatically, enabling DevOps and GitOps integrations.
Question 5: What does Cribl Stream's internal metrics and monitoring system expose for operational visibility?
- Health metrics of all connected Splunk indexers and their queue depths
- Real-time data quality scores for events stored in Cribl Lake
- User authentication events and access logs for security auditing
- Worker node performance metrics such as throughput, error rates, and queue depth (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Worker node performance metrics such as throughput, error rates, and queue depth
Cribl Stream collects self-telemetry on processing rates, errors, and queue depths, which can be forwarded to monitoring platforms like Prometheus, Grafana, or Splunk.
Question 6: In Cribl Stream, what is a 'Pack'?
- A portable, shareable bundle of pipelines, routes, sample data, and knowledge objects for a specific use case (Correct answer)
- A compressed archive of processed events batched and sent to a destination
- A licensing unit that defines the maximum GB/day a deployment is permitted to process
- A set of Worker nodes grouped together to handle a specific data source type
Correct answer: A portable, shareable bundle of pipelines, routes, sample data, and knowledge objects for a specific use case
Cribl Packs are pre-built, community-shareable collections of pipelines, routes, and knowledge objects addressing specific integration or compliance use cases, importable with a single click.
Question 7: Which authentication methods does Cribl Stream support natively for enterprise identity provider integration?
- RADIUS authentication with shared secrets and one-time passwords
- SAML 2.0 for SSO and LDAP/Active Directory for directory-based authentication (Correct answer)
- OAuth 1.0 token-based authentication exclusively
- Kerberos tickets for Windows domain environments only
Correct answer: SAML 2.0 for SSO and LDAP/Active Directory for directory-based authentication
Cribl Stream supports SAML 2.0 for single sign-on and LDAP/AD for directory integration, enabling compatibility with identity providers like Okta, Azure AD, and PingFederate.
Cribl Architecture & Components 5
What key capability differentiates Cribl Search from traditional SIEM search platforms?