SplunkBase Brings IT Troubleshooting Wiki to the Masses

OSS_ilation writes "IT troubleshooting firm Splunk is using LinuxWorld Boston as a platform to formally launch Splunk Base, a global wiki that will offer IT pros a free-of-charge venue to exchange troubleshooting information, tools and fixes. Splunk is promising that the wiki is completely vendor neutral, and can be compared to Wikipedia, the online open encyclopedia that is regulated and updated by the community-at-large. Users don't even have to have a copy of Splunk Professional to use it. From the article: 'If you believe the research from firms like Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, then Splunk Base has arrived at a key moment. According to IDC, companies will spend more than $100 billion this year on managing the world's data centers. And with virtualization quickly becoming an IT buzzword in 2006, the complexity and costs could increase.'"

Comments

A little late to the party, don't you think?

[StevenMaurer]

I'm glad these people have suddenly gotten the idea that there is a lot of knowledge in the global community that can be shared, but seriously, how is this better than Wikipedia, Expert's Exchange, or plain old Google?
What does this tool offer that's better in any way?
Move along. There's nothing to see.

Sir, can I interest you in some Splunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only a bad name, they are a very frequent advertiser here on Slashdot which should have been mentioned.
Have a look at their demo - I was not impressed. Plenty of tools do the same thing. Both Open Source and proprietary.
A troubleshooting Wiki would be nice, though. Give ExpertsExchange some competition when it comes to IT peer questions and answers.

How long...

[squidguy]

...before some non-open source software vendor comes along and gets a court order to shut this down or other such injunction / legal action claiming release of proprietary information?

Already exists

[Intron]

Its called "usenet"

You should look at splunk

[anomaly]

I have looked at splunk. I've got a copy of their eval of professional installed, and it's interesting. There are a lot of things that they do well. Marketing isn't one of them, but the underlying technology is pretty cool.

Here's where they shine: finding data lost in a log file. Picture if you will a log file with free-form text in parts and XML in other parts. With no training about what the log looked like, their tool could do a great job of identifying patterns in the free-form text - essentially blocks or "records" of data there, and pulling out the XML sections.

You can search for patterns in the data, and splunk will help identify them for you. The data import and pattern-matching parts of their code are platform agnostic. There are no adapters to buy, and no "training" to find useful data patterns. I think that they are doing a good job on the technologyside of things, and it's definitely worth the time to look at this tool.

Please note: I have no affiliation with Splunk. I'm not even one of their customers. I have no reason to promote their product. I've looked at it and they do a good job of finding obscure data.

Respectfully,
Anomaly

Experts Exchange - scroll down!

[Spy der Mann]

Expert's Exchange? Give me a break. Most of their solutions require a login and the page is so filled with ads that it's not worth your time.

I guess you weren't of the ones who simply scrolled down to see the answer.

See:

[Question]

[lame subscription button]

[ads]

[more ads]

[answers here, doh :P ]

Re:how long until

[ZSpade]

I'm assuming never, as it seems that as things progress we're seeing less of a need to reboot. In windows 9x/me you pretty much had to restart after making *ANY* changes. If you installed a porogram, reboot. If you changed a minor network setting, reboot. If things started getting slow, reboot! The network doesn't work? REBOOT!!!

Now in XP however if the network stops working a reboot seldom fixes it. When you install programs, with the exception of Windows updates and anti-viruses, you need not reboot. The same is true for degrading performance. For the most part rebooting doesn't fix that like it used to, as XP manages memory in a much more effecient manner, and actually knows how to free and reallocate it.

So when, you ask, will we be able to fix everything with a reboot? I answer, will the next true generation of computers even need a reboot function, or will we simply let them fall asleep, only to awake them when needed. Most problems will correct themselves in the future, I'm curious as to how long we'll still be seeing error messages, even if something does go wrong.