This page provides an overview of the pgAudit extension and its functionalities.
Overview
The pgAudit extension helps you to configure logs that are often required to comply with government, financial, and ISO certifications.
Database auditing in AlloyDB for PostgreSQL is available through the open-source pgAudit extension. By using this extension, you can selectively record and track AlloyDB operations performed against a given database. The extension provides auditing capabilities to monitor and record a select subset of operations.
The pgAudit extension applies to executed AlloyDB commands and queries. In contrast, Cloud Audit Logs applies to administrative and maintenance operations performed on an AlloyDB instance, as described in Monitor access using Audit logs .
Limitations
The following limitations apply to the pgAudit functionality:
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Creation and processing of audit log records is asynchronous. You might experience a small delay before audit records are available in Cloud Logging.
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When pgAudit is enabled and configured, the creation rate of audit log records depends on your configuration and workload activity.
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The system is designed to support a maximum log ingestion rate of 90 MiB per second.
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When log generation rate exceeds the platform's ingestion capacity, logs are buffered locally. Sustained backpressure can result in the following:
- Higher latency between audit events and records visible in Cloud Logging.
- Instance restarts or crashes resulting from local disk space exhaustion.
- Intermittent gaps in processed and persisted audit log trails.
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The maximum size for a single audit record is 1MB.
