Audit Log

The VDI and DaaS Audit Log enables you to view the following in you organization's environment:

• Changes made to ControlUp’s configuration settings, such as adding a new hypervisor.
• Remote operations performed on managed assets through ControlUp, such as rebooting a virtual machine or killing a process on a managed machine.

By default, the Audit Log is configured to enable centralized auditing in ControlUp Hybrid Cloud environments. The Audit Log can upload data to the ControlUp Cloud, or you can configure it to save to a local Syslog server. 

Auditing Methods

Group Actions

The auditing is carried out separately for each OBJECT on each TARGET and includes all details and completion status for each Audit Log entry.

Auditing Optimizations

The initialization record contains all data except the output, while the completion record contains the output, status, and the error message if the action failed. To save storage and traffic, the initialization and completion records contain only the relevant data.

In the case of mass/group activity in a public configuration, we have separate Initialized Audit Log entries for each object and one common "Completed" entry for all objects in the group. This is because an action is completed successfully for all objects, or failed for all objects.

The Audit Log documents up to 2,000 automated action executions, per trigger, per minute in your organization.

If the number of executions exceeds the limit, the automated actions run without auditing, even if the enforced mode is enabled. The following Audit Log entry is added to document the exception:
"The amount of Audit Log entries generated by the trigger exceeds the permitted limit and will be silenced for a while."

Storing the Audit Logs

Logs can be stored in the following ways:

• ControlUp Cloud. Default configuration for Hybrid Cloud environments. Once support for the cloud datastore is implemented, it is possible to view an Audit Log report in the web UI. The data is retained in this log for one year after it was first recorded. This option isn't available for ControlUp On-premises (COP) implementations. For complete information on viewing the VDI and DaaS Audit Log, see here.
  Example of the Audit Log stored in the web UI: 
• SysLog. The contents of the SysLog datastore can be viewed using any standard Syslog reader (e.g. Splunk). On-premises implementations can only store Audit Logs on their SysLog Servers.
  Example of the Audit Log stored on a Syslog Server:

Actions are reported in the Audit Log as two separate entries: once for initialization of the action, and once for completion of the action.

Audit Log Settings

Only the organization owner can modify the Audit Log settings. The organization owner is displayed and managed in the Security Settings pane of the Real-Time DX Console.

To open the Audit Log tab, click Audit Log on the Settings ribbon:

The Audit Log tab includes the following:

• Enable Centralized Auditing. For enabling/disabling the Audit Log data storage in the Hybrid Cloud environment.
  • Fail action if auditing fails. Enforced mode. Prevents actions from being executed if the auditing wasn't completed properly. Not available in SysLog.
• Send to SysLog Server. Enables you to save the auditing records to a SysLog server by entering its:
  • IP/hostname. Enter the IP address or hostname of the SysLog server.
  • Port. Enter the port to use to connect to the Syslog server.
  • Protocol. Select the protocol to use to connect to the SysLog server: UDP or TCP.

After you finish making changes to the settings, click Apply to save the changes or OK to save the changes and close the window.

Audit Logs Data

For each entry in the Audit Log, the following information is stored: