Splunk Search

joining two searches with common field

allen_edmondson
Explorer

I'm not an advanced user of splunk, so I'm not even sure this is possible. I have two searches which have a common field say, "host" in two events (one from each search). The event time from both searches occurs within 20 seconds of each other. Is it possible to use the common field, "host" to join the two events (from the two search results) together within 20 seconds of either event. Hope that makes sense.

sowings
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

Yes, transaction can link on two (or more) fields:

http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.0/SearchReference/Transaction

sowings
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

Searches in different indexes are no problem; you can arrange the search terms with OR there as well, e.g. (index=os OR index=linux).

0 Karma

allen_edmondson
Explorer

Thanks Kristian, Is it possible to use transaction on two fields, eg "hosts" & "hosts2" whereby it is the data in both fields which is the same, and it is that which I wish to correlate?

Also, Both searches are different indexes

0 Karma

kristian_kolb
Ultra Champion

I would recommend approach 2), since joins are quite expensive performance-wise. We know too little of your actual desires (!) but perhaps a transaction could be what you're after;

sourcetype=X OR sourcetype=Y other_search_terms | transaction host maxpause=30s | blah blah

If events with the same host value are no more than 30 seconds apart, they will form a transaction, which essentially is the participating events bolted together chronologically.

transaction is faster than join, but stats is even faster. Depending on your use case, perhaps that can be used.

/K

allen_edmondson
Explorer

Thanks for your help. I have joined two searches by index, with some success. However, I have noticed that one of the fields in the second search, does not always show the correct value. Is it possible to join the two searches, based on the join criteria within 60 seconds of the time of either log. This would solve my problem!

0 Karma

sowings
Splunk Employee
Splunk Employee

1) You can use join with an "outer" search and a subsearch:

first_search | join host [ second_search ]

2) But you probably don't have to do them as separate searches. You can group your search terms with an OR to match them all at once. Let's say my first_search above is "sourcetype=syslog "session start"" and my second_search is "sourcetype=syslog "session end"", I could combine these (recognizing the common bits) as "sourcetype=syslog session (start OR end)". Then, both events are present in the same result set.

If you can provide some more details about your searches, we can probably provide some clearer hints on how you might approach the problem.

tl;dr: Yes, you can join result sets together.

Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Index This | I am a number, but when you add ‘G’ to me, I go away. What number am I?

March 2024 Edition Hayyy Splunk Education Enthusiasts and the Eternally Curious!  We’re back with another ...

What’s New in Splunk App for PCI Compliance 5.3.1?

The Splunk App for PCI Compliance allows customers to extend the power of their existing Splunk solution with ...

Extending Observability Content to Splunk Cloud

Register to join us !   In this Extending Observability Content to Splunk Cloud Tech Talk, you'll see how to ...