What is systemd?

systemd is a system startup and service manager that is widely deployed as the default init system on most major Linux distributions. You can configure systemd to manage processes, such as splunkd, as services, and allocate system resources to those processes under cgroups.

systemd advantages

systemd offers the following general advantages:

  • Enhanced parallel processing.
  • Simplified configuration with standardized unit text files. No scripts required.
  • Improved mechanism for expressing dependencies. For example, you can specify in the unit file that the network must be up before startup of the splunkd service occurs.

systemd offers these additional specific advantages for Splunk deployments:

  • Start splunkd at boot.
  • Monitor and manage splunkd service during runtime.
  • Provides tools to debug and troubleshoot boot-time and service activities.
  • Allows more control over plug-in monitoring tools that track the status of Splunk instances.
  • Simplifies the set up of cgroups required for workload management in Splunk Enterprise. See Set up Linux for workload management in the Workload Management manual.