Anyone taken the SPLK-1003 admin exam recently? Wondering what to expect.

[bharris]

I’m planning to take the Splunk Enterprise Certified Admin (SPLK-1003) exam soon and just wanted to see if anyone here has taken it recently.

I’ve been going through the official course and practice stuff, but I’m curious how close the real exam is to that material. Were there any topics that caught you off guard or felt underrepresented in the prep?

Also open to any tips or “wish I knew this before the test” kind of advice. Appreciate any input!

[anthonyhopkins · Accepted solution]

Hello, I took the exam last week. Honestly, it’s pretty close to the official course material, but there were a couple of things that tripped me up. The exam does a good job covering things like indexing, data inputs, user roles, and cluster management, which are all covered well in the official training. If you’ve gone through the course and labs, you'll be in a good spot for these topics.

What caught me off guard were some of the more detailed questions about conf file precedence and deployment server stuff. These weren't covered as much in the course, so I had to rely on what I knew from hands-on experience. There were also a few questions about knowledge objects that felt like they went deeper than the course material, so I’d recommend brushing up on that if you haven’t already.

One tip I’d give is to make sure you’ve spent some time actually working in Splunk. Hands-on experience really helped me on the exam. Also, get comfortable with the differences between the deployment server, license master, and cluster manager. Some questions tried to mix those up, and knowing the differences saved me time. Speaking of time, definitely time yourself during practice exams, some questions can be tricky and might eat up more time than you'd expect.

Oh, and if you haven’t already, I’d recommend practicing the CertBoosters sample exam questions as well. They are perfectly aligned with the official prep material and are pretty similar to the actual exam's questioning style. it helped me get a feel for what to expect.

Overall, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. If you’ve gone through the official training and put in some hands-on practice, you’ll do fine. Good luck!

[livehybrid]

Hi

The SPLK-1003 exam closely follows the official course and practice materials, but expect some questions that require practical understanding beyond role memorisation - things you would pick up during hands-on work with Splunk.

Focus areas include Splunk installation, configuration files, user roles, indexes, data inputs, and basic troubleshooting. If you havent already seen it - I would recommend looking at the exam blueprint docs at https://www.splunk.com/en_us/pdfs/training/splunk-test-blueprint-enterprise-admin.pdf which give an overview of what is covered and the marking weightings. Its a 56 question / 60 minute exam similar format the the User / Power user exam you might have done previously.

• Be very familiar with configuration file precedence and merging.
• Understand role-based access control and how to troubleshoot permissions.
• Practice interpreting btool outputs and diagnosing configuration issues.
• Know the steps for adding and managing data inputs (monitor, scripted, network).
• Review indexer and search head clustering basics, even if lightly covered in the course.

Good luck with the exam! 🙂 

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