Immutable logging of access requests to distributed file systems

A tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium storing instructions that when executed by one or more processors effectuate operations comprising:

• receiving, with one or more processors, a request to access a distributed data store, wherein:
• the request is a request to read from or write to a unit of content pertaining to a workload application;
• the distributed data store stores a plurality of units of content that are each distributed among multiple computing entities hosting different subsets of data of the distributed data store;
• each computing entity among the multiple computing entities corresponds to a different host at a different user-space instance of one or more different computing devices;
• and
• each unit of content requires information from a plurality of computing entities to read the respective unit of content;
• when writing each unit of content, different portions of information required to access the respective unit of content are written to different ones of the multiple computing entities such that no single one of the multiple computing entities stores all of the information required to access the respective unit of content;
• causing, with one or more processors of a computing device configured to participate in combining the information from the plurality of computing entities to access units of content, logging of the request in an entry in a tamper-evident log, wherein the tamper-evident log defines one or more sequences of cryptographic hash values based on earlier logged entries;
• and
• storing, with one or more processors, the tamper-evident log in memory.