What is the purpose of search head clustering in Splunk?

Search head clustering in Splunk is primarily designed to enable load balancing and high availability, making it a crucial component in environments that require scalability and reliability for search operations.

In a search head cluster, multiple search heads work together, allowing for the distribution of search queries across these heads. This distribution ensures that the workload is balanced, so no single search head becomes a bottleneck, enhancing the overall performance of ad-hoc queries. Additionally, if one search head experiences a failure, another can take over, thus providing high availability. This redundancy is fundamental for maintaining consistent operations in critical environments where downtime is not acceptable.

The other options reflect functions that are not typically associated with search head clustering. For example, while enhancing processing power for ad-hoc queries may seem relevant, this is a byproduct of load balancing rather than the primary purpose. Similarly, search head clustering does not involve data storage or backups, nor does it deal with access restrictions directly, as these functions are managed by other components within Splunk.