Can someone help me better understand a few things about kvstore?

[splunkn]

As a Splunk beginner, I want to understand few things about kvstore. Could anyone explain me in brief?

Is kvstore mandatory for Splunk instance or for a Splunk search head? I understand it is used to write key-value pairs, but how does it differ from lookup?
What is app key value store? Also I read it performed CRUD operations on data. How it is doing this?

Many thanks.

[dlayvand_splunk]

Note: the URL to .conf2015 recorded sessions and presentations has changed. Here is the new URL to use: http://conf.splunk.com/speakers/2015.html#
(So, this is where one can find the presentation titled "The 'State' of Splunk - Using the KVStore to Maintain App State")

[lguinn2]

If you want to learn about the KV store, try the documentation and the presentation from the September 2015 Splunk .conf

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.3.2/Admin/AboutKVstore

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.3.1511/Knowledge/ConfigureKVstorelookups

http://conf.splunk.com/speakers.html# (Look for the presentation titled "The 'State' of Splunk - Using the KVStore to Maintain App State")

http://dev.splunk.com/view/webframework-tutorials/SP-CAAAEZT

Lookups and the KV store can serve similar purposes, but KV store can do some things that lookups cannot. And the KV store is designed for larger data sets. The KV store is automatically installed when you install Splunk; you are not required to do anything to configure or manage it. In fact, unless you are going to actively use it, you should just leave it alone and let Splunk use it for its own internal purposes. Do not delete it.