In Today’s IT world, most organizations and enterprises are maximizing value out of their big data by the use of operational intelligence tools. As there are several such tools in the market, picking the right one is fundamental for the success of your business as they influence the major decision-making process. In this article, well a comparison of the three top-notch products, Splunk, QRadar, and ELK stack. Its always a debatable question about which one is the best among the three? As all are great tools and have a lot of beneficial similarities that make it relatively challenging to choose between the three. Below are some points that can give a clear cutting edge in this dilemma.
What is Splunk, QRadar, and ELK?
Splunk- is a technologically advanced IT tool that can be used to search for all the data generated by network devices, applications, and servers within a network system. users. More like QRadar, Splunk turns machine data into complex operational intelligence through real-time analysis of corporates data through alerts, reports, charts, etc.
QRadar - is defined as an enterprise security information and event management tool which collects log data from an organization, its host assets, applications, user behavior patterns, operating systems, vulnerabilities, and devices. this SIEM product prevents damage to an organization by identifying malicious activities through real-time analysis of network flows and log data.
ELK – ELK stack comprises the log search tool (Elastics-search), data visualization tool (kibana), and data roter (logstatsh). Working simultaneously, they offer fulltime data analysis. The three components have been built to work seamlessly together although each has a unique source vendor that drives it. ELK also provides the same features as Splunk such as alerting, log search, reporting, etc.
Know the differences upfront
All three tools play an elemental role when it comes to analysis and big data evaluation.
All are used in lob-based data analysis.
Splank processes machine data necessary for generating meaningful ones which in turn helps in better interpretation of it.
ELK depends on Elastic-search for mining of data and visualizes then given data extracts in the form of a bar graph, line charts, and pie charts.
Both ELK and QRadar accommodate users with multiple options such as analyzing the type of browser required for a particular audience. Further, users can carry out a real-time traffic analysis by mapping website visitors. With ELK, end-users can create as many dashboards as they wish given that they meet the roles one needs to visualize the data for.
Further comparison in terms of;
Performance
ELK is considered as one of the market giants due to the variety of options it gives to its clients. The tool needs minimal configuration at the beginning so that it can harness values later. Similarly, QRadar also provides its users with options such as interactive charts, pre-built filters, and charts, which allows for maximum analysis with just one click. Of the three, Splunk has a relatively poor performance which can be improved by assigning other software to boost the performance by running alongside Splunk or by finding the balance between redundancy and speed which and a RAID 10 hardware to support the performance.
Cost-wise
Splunk charges are based on daily data consumption as from as low as $2, 000 GigaBytes annually and a perpetual license fee of $5, 400 per GigaByte.
ELK and QRadar are open-source visualization tools and hence free although with minimal service fee when used as a hosted service.
Search Capability
Splunk allows its users to search for non-configured fields by converting its format in –line with the same.
In ELK non-configured fields are searched by first having pre-defined properties for aggregation.
