According to Splunk’s Deployment Planning and Implementation Guidelines, one of the most critical elements of a Splunk deployment plan is a comprehensive data source inventory and current logging details. This information defines the scope of data ingestion and directly influences sizing, architecture design, and licensing.
A proper deployment plan should identify:
All data sources (such as syslogs, application logs, network devices, OS logs, databases, etc.)
Expected daily ingest volume per source
Log formats and sourcetypes
Retention requirements and compliance constraints
This data forms the foundation for index sizing, forwarder configuration, and storage planning. Without a well-defined data inventory, Splunk architects cannot accurately determine hardware capacity, indexing load, or network throughput requirements.
While stakeholder mapping, topology diagrams, and continuity plans (Options A, B, D) are valuable in a broader IT project, Splunk’s official guidance emphasizes logging details and source inventory as mandatory for a deployment plan. It ensures that the Splunk environment is properly sized, licensed, and aligned with business data visibility goals.
References (Splunk Enterprise Documentation):
• Splunk Enterprise Deployment Planning Manual – Data Source Inventory Requirements
• Capacity Planning for Indexer and Search Head Sizing
• Planning Data Onboarding and Ingestion Strategies
• Splunk Architecture and Implementation Best Practices
