Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect Practice Test

Of the following types of files within an index bucket, which file type may consume the most disk?

1. Rawdata

2. Bloom filter

3. Metadata (.data)

4. Inverted index (.tsidx)

The correct answer is: Bloom filter

The most disk consumption within an index bucket is attributed to the raw data files. These files hold the unprocessed, original event data ingested by Splunk. Their size can be substantial because they include all the raw events as they were originally captured, without any compression or additional processing to reduce their footprint. While bloom filters, metadata, and inverted index files also reside within index buckets, they serve different purposes and typically have less impact on disk utilization. Bloom filters help optimize searches by preventing unnecessary access to certain data based on certain characteristics but don't take up significant space themselves. Metadata files (.data) store information about the indexed data and are crucial for managing index efficiency but are smaller in size compared to the raw data files. Inverted indexes (.tsidx) are designed to facilitate quick searches by providing a mapping of terms to their locations within the raw data. Though important, their size is generally limited compared to the vast amount of raw event data they reference. Therefore, the raw data files are the largest contributors to disk consumption among the files within an index bucket.