Just to close the loop on this one. Went ahead and created a JIRA against Ambari.
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AMBARI-22708 Ranger HDFS logging health Ambari Alert On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 12:16 PM, David Quiroga <quirogadf4w...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello > > First some background: > > We were directed to retain audit/access records "forever" (technically 7 > years but that is basically forever in electronic log time). > > Each Hadoop component generates local audit logs as per their log4j > settings. In our production system these logs would frequently fill up the > disk. At first we would just compress them in place but that only works for > so long and there was no redundancy with local disk storage. In others > words, no long term plan. > > We started to discuss moving them to HDFS or a different storage solution. > One of our team members pointed out the Ranger plugins are already logging > the "same data" into HDFS. > Probably after several meeting with the higher-ups, using Ranger logs as > the record truth was approved. Components log4j settings were updated to > purge data automatically. > > Purging local logs felt like operating with out a safety net. > Thought it we be good to check that Ranger was successful logging to HDFS > each day. Should mention this is a kerberized cluster, not that anything > ever goes wrong with kerberos. > > Checking this would have certainly been possible with a shell script, but > we have been pushing to centralize warning/alerts in Ambari. And so an > Ambari alert python script to check on Ranger Logging Health was crafted. > > For the most part the alert was modeled after some of the hive alerts. > At the moment it just checks that the daily /ranger/audit/<component> HDFS > directory has been created. > > I am sure there is room for improvement but I was curious: > > 1. Has anyone run into this type of concern? > a. Would an alert like this be helpful? > b. Did you come up with another solution? > > 2. What is best way to get this out into the community (e.g. JIRA, if so > Ranger or Ambari - I am checking with both mailing list)? > a. Any other advice on how to best share? > > Thank you for your time. > -David >