Auditing Lustre file system

TL;DR

This paper explores implementing and enhancing auditing features in the Lustre distributed file system on CentOS, aiming to improve security, reliability, and user-friendly monitoring through a graphical interface.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive Lustre auditing implementation with a graphical interface, improving security monitoring and management in high-performance distributed storage environments.

Findings

Enhanced security and monitoring capabilities in Lustre

Development of a user-friendly graphical auditing interface

Improved detection of anomalies and policy compliance

Abstract

With the increasing demand for data storage and the exponential growth of data, traditional single-server architectures are no longer sufficient to handle the massive amounts of data storage, transfer, and various file system events. As a result, distributed file systems have become a necessity to address the scalability challenges of file systems. One such popular distributed file system is Lustre, which is extensively used in high-performance computing environments. Lustre offers parallel file access, allowing multiple clients to access and store data simultaneously. However, in order to ensure the security and integrity of data, auditing plays a crucial role. Lustre auditing serves as a proof of security and enables the implementation of robust security features such as authentication with Kerberos, mandatory access control with SELinux, isolation, and more. Auditing helps track and monitor file system activities, providing valuable insights into user actions, system events, and potential security breaches. The objective of this project is to explore Lustre auditing using CentOS, a popular Linux distribution, within a Lustre architecture. By implementing Lustre auditing, we aim to enhance the security and reliability of the file system. Additionally, we plan to develop a graphical interface that presents the auditing features in a user-friendly and visually appealing manner. This interface will provide administrators and users with a convenient way to monitor and analyze auditing logs, view access patterns, detect anomalies, and ensure compliance with security policies. By combining the power of Lustre's parallel file system architecture with comprehensive auditing capabilities and an intuitive graphical interface, we aim to provide a robust and user-friendly solution for managing and securing large-scale data storage and access.