Back to all use cases
Cross-IndustryConsultingHybrid

Cutting ingest volume without cutting the data anyone actually needs

GL
Global Logistics Provider

Overview

A logistics provider was repeatedly exceeding its Splunk ingest volume and facing an expensive renewal. AceMQ analyzed where the volume came from and designed a filtering and tiering strategy that preserved every required detection and audit capability.

Challenge

A large share of daily ingest came from a handful of noisy sources: verbose web access logs including static asset requests, debug output that had been enabled during an old incident and never turned off, and duplicate collection where two agents were forwarding the same files. None of this data was referenced by any detection rule or compliance requirement, but nobody could prove that without an analysis, and no team wanted to be the one that deleted the log that turned out to matter.

Environment

Hybrid Splunk deployment ingesting from cloud and on-premises sources, subject to security detection and audit retention requirements.

Approach

We start from the requirements side: every detection rule, dashboard, and compliance obligation is mapped to the data it depends on. Anything not referenced by that map is a filtering candidate. High-volume data with occasional value gets routed to cheap object storage where it remains retrievable rather than being discarded. Filtering happens at the forwarding tier so volume is reduced before it is counted.

Solution

  • Ingest volume attributed by source, sourcetype, and host to rank contributors precisely
  • Every detection rule, scheduled search, and compliance requirement mapped to the data it depends on
  • Null-queue routing applied at the forwarding tier for event classes provably referenced by nothing
  • Verbose sources reduced at origin — debug logging disabled, static asset requests excluded, duplicate collection removed
  • High-volume, occasionally useful data routed to object storage with a retrieval path for investigations
  • Volume monitoring and per-source budgets added so a future logging change cannot quietly consume headroom

Outcome

Daily ingest fell by roughly a third with no detection rule or compliance obligation losing its source data, which changed the renewal conversation materially. Per-source budgets have since caught a debug logging change before it affected the license.

Technologies

SplunkAmazon S3LinuxKafka

Ready to Get Started?

Whether you need architecture advisory, 24/7 support, or full managed services, AceMQ has the expertise to help.

Contact Us