Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect Practice Test

Which statement about licensing in a clustered Splunk deployment is true?

1. Free licenses do not support clustering.

2. Replicated data does not count against licensing.

3. Each cluster member needs its own clustering license.

4. Cluster members must share the same license pool.

The correct answer is: Free licenses do not support clustering.

In a clustered Splunk deployment, the correct statement is that free licenses do not support clustering. This is an important aspect to understand about Splunk's licensing model. A free license allows a user to access basic functionalities of Splunk but imposes limitations, including the lack of support for clustering. Clustering is a feature that enables high availability and data replication, which are crucial for enterprise deployments. Therefore, organizations that require clustered configurations must purchase appropriate licenses rather than relying on free licenses. The other statements do not hold true in the context of clustered deployments. For instance, replicated data does count against licensing since Splunk's licensing is based on indexing volume and not solely on unique data instances. Also, each cluster member does not need its own separate clustering license; instead, the cluster as a whole operates under a single license pool, allowing for more efficient management of licensing across the cluster. Moreover, all cluster members must indeed share the same license pool to ensure consistent data access and management across the clustered architecture.