Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect Practice Test

How does the average run time of searches relate to the number of CPU cores on the indexers?

1. Averages run time is unrelated to CPU cores

2. Averaging increases with fewer CPU cores

3. Averages run time decreases with fewer CPU cores

4. Averaging increases with more CPU cores

The correct answer is: Averaging increases with fewer CPU cores

The relationship between the average run time of searches and the number of CPU cores on the indexers is significant because search performance is often directly connected to the available processing power. Each search job can utilize multiple CPU cores to execute concurrently, thus affecting performance. When there are fewer CPU cores available, searches must compete for those limited resources, which can increase the average run time since each search job cannot be processed as efficiently or concurrently. Conversely, having more CPU cores typically allows for parallel processing, reducing contention among search jobs and leading to faster execution times. As a result, with fewer CPU cores, the average run time tends to rise as the system becomes less capable of distributing workloads efficiently, confirming that averaging increases with fewer CPU cores. This understanding emphasizes the importance of CPU core allocation in optimizing search performance in Splunk environments.