Enabling Audit Log

The Alluxio Audit Log is a critical component for security and compliance, providing a detailed, structured record of operations performed within the system. It helps you monitor sensitive data access, track administrative commands, and meet regulatory requirements.

Audit logs are generated in a structured JSON format, allowing for easy parsing and integration with analysis tools like Splunk or the ELK Stack. Logging covers two primary categories of operations:

1. Management Operations: API requests for management tasks, such as loading data or managing mount points.

2. Data Access: Read and write operations performed through various interfaces, including S3 and HDFS.

This guide explains how to enable and configure audit logging for both categories.

Enabling and Configuring Audit Logging

Audit logging is configured separately for management operations and for data access interfaces.

Step 1: Enable Management Operation Audit Logging

This configuration logs all administrative API requests. This feature is enabled by default.

The audit logs are stored in the /mnt/alluxio/logs/gateway/audit/ directory on the Gateway host machine and stored in the /opt/alluxio/logs/audit/in the Gateway pod. To modify the log location or other settings, you can update the gateway section in your alluxio-cluster.yaml file:

spec:
  gateway:
    enabled: true
    log:
      level: info
      type: hostPath
      hostPath: /mnt/alluxio/logs/gateway
      size: 1Gi
      storageClass: standard
    auditLog:
      enabled: true

Step 2: Enable Data Access Audit Logging

This configuration logs data access operations from clients using the S3 and HDFS interfaces.

To enable it, add the following properties to your alluxio-cluster.yaml file:

spec:
  properties:
    alluxio.audit.logging.enabled: "true"
    alluxio.audit.logging.poll.interval: "5s"

• By default, data access audit logs are stored in the ${audit.logs.dir} directory. You can customize this location by modifying the *_AUDIT_LOG appenders in your conf/log4j2.xml file.

• For operator versions 3.3.3 and later, the required audit log appenders are included in log4j2.xml by default. For earlier versions, you must manually add the logger configuration to the log4j2.xml section of your alluxio-configmap.

Property	Description	Default Value
alluxio.audit.logging.enabled	Set to true to enable audit logging for data access operations.	false
alluxio.audit.logging.poll.interval	The interval at which audit logs are written to the file.	5s

Understanding the Audit Log Format

Each audit log entry is a structured JSON object with a consistent schema, making it easy to process and analyze.

Audit Log Schema

Field	Type	Description
timestamp	string	The timestamp of the operation in ISO 8601 format with timezone (e.g., 2025-08-02T09:12:30.123456+08:00[Asia/Singapore]).
user	JSON Object	Information about the user who performed the operation, containing name (user identifier), group (list of groups), and role (list of roles).
interface	string	The access interface used. Possible values: S3, HADOOP_FS, and GATEWAY. GATEWAY represents management operations.
operation	string / JSON Object	The specific operation or API name. For data access interfaces, this is a string (e.g., GetObject). For the Gateway, this is a JSON object with method and path.
resource	JSON Object / string	The resource involved. The content varies by interface. For example, an S3 operation includes bucket and object, while an HDFS operation includes a path.
status	string	The result of the operation, such as SUCCESS, FAILURE, FORBIDDEN, ALLOWED, or UNAUTHORIZED.
errorMessage	string	If the operation failed, this field contains the error message.
clientIp	string	The IP address of the client that initiated the request.
clientPort	string	The source port number of the client connection.
reqContentLen	string	The content length of the request, if applicable.
respContentLen	string	The content length of the response, if applicable.
requestId	string	A unique identifier for the request, primarily used by the Gateway.

Log Examples

Example 1: Management Operation

A user lists all mount points via the API.

{
    "timestamp": "2025-07-29T15:21:21.846416+08:00",
    "user": {
        "name": "super-user",
        "group": ["Storage"],
        "role": ["SuperAdmin"]
    },
    "interface": "GATEWAY",
    "operation": {
        "method": "GET",
        "path": "/api/v1/mount"
    },
    "resource": {
        "parameters": {},
        "body": {}
    },
    "status": "SUCCESS",
    "errorMessage": "",
    "clientIp": "192.168.124.21",
    "requestId": "b3c9efe4-35aa-42d0-8690-ab044126452c"
}

Example 2: S3 API Data Access

A user fetches an object using an S3 client.

{
    "timestamp": "2025-07-24T14:45:59.911358+08:00[Asia/Shanghai]",
    "user": {
        "name": "[e-mail]",
        "group": ["Search"],
        "role": ["GroupAdmin"]
    },
    "interface": "S3",
    "operation": "GetObject",
    "resource": {
        "bucket": "testbucket",
        "object": "hosts3",
        "sourcePath": null,
        "prefix": null,
        "path": null
    },
    "status": "SUCCESS",
    "errorMessage": null,
    "clientIp": "127.0.0.1",
    "clientPort": "60304",
    "reqContentLen": "None",
    "respContentLen": "268",
    "requestId": null
}

Example 3: HDFS API Data Access

A user opens a file using a Hadoop client.

{
    "timestamp": "2025-07-24T16:37:28.71468+08:00[Asia/Shanghai]",
    "user": {
        "name": "[e-mail]",
        "group": ["Search"],
        "role": ["GroupAdmin"]
    },
    "interface": "HADOOP_FS",
    "operation": "HadoopFs.Open",
    "resource": {
        "path": "/testbucket/hosts3"
    },
    "status": "ALLOWED",
    "clientIp": "192.168.1.104"
}

Appendix: Audited Operations by Interface

Management Operations

All administrative API calls are audited.

S3 API

All S3 API calls are audited. For batch operations like DeleteObjects, a separate log entry is generated for each sub-operation.

Hadoop Filesystem (HDFS) API

The following Hadoop Filesystem API operations are audited:

• HadoopFs.Authenticate

• HadoopFs.Create

• HadoopFs.Append

• HadoopFs.Delete

• HadoopFs.GetFileStatus

• HadoopFs.GetFileBlockLocations

• HadoopFs.ListStatus

• HadoopFs.Mkdirs

• HadoopFs.Open

• HadoopFs.Rename

• HadoopFs.SetOwner

• HadoopFs.SetPermission

Note on clientIp: For the Hadoop Filesystem interface, an IPv4 address is obtained. If the machine has multiple network cards, it may not be possible to determine which one was used for the operation. It is recommended to rely on the user to identify the actor.