SDN Controller Programming Guide

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Figure 13 Authenticating via RSdoc Step 2
Audit Logging
The Audit Log retains information concerning activities, operations and configuration changes that
have been performed by an authorized end user. The purpose of this subsystem is to allow
tracking of significant changes system. The subsystem comprises of an API which various
components can use to record the fact that some important operation occurred, when and who
triggered the operation and potentially why. The subsystem also provides means to track and
retrieve the recorded information via an internal API as well as via external REST API. An audit log
entry, once created, may not be modified. Audit log entries, once created, may not be selectively
deleted. Audit log entries are only removed based on the age out policy defined by the
administrator.
Audit Log data is maintained in persistence storage (default retention period is one year) and is
presented to the end user via both the UI and the REST API layers.
The audit log framework provides a cleanup task that is executed daily (by default) that ages out
audit log entries from persistent storage based on the policy set by the administrator.
An audit log entry consists of the following:
 User—a string representation of the user that performed the operation which triggered the
audit log entry.
 Time-stamp—the time that the audit log entry was created. The time information is persisted
in an UTC format.
 Activity—a string representation of the activity the user was doing that triggered this audit log
entry.
 Data—a string description for the audit log entry.