SCT tests are designed to test Scylla database on physical/virtual servers under high read/write load. Currently the tests are run using avocado[1] framework (version 36.4) These tests automatically create:

• Scylla clusters - Run Scylla database
• Loader machines - used to run load generators like cassandra-stress
• Monitoring server - uses official Scylla Monitoring repo to monitor Scylla clusters and Loaders

1. A library, called sdcm (stands for scylla distributed cluster manager). The word 'distributed' was used here to differentiate between that and CCM, since with CCM the cluster nodes are usually local processes running on the local machine instead of using actual machines running scylla services as cluster nodes. It contains:
   • sdcm.cluster: Base classes for Clusters
   • sdcm.remote: SSH library
   • sdcm.nemesis: Nemesis classes (a nemesis is a class that does disruption in the node)
   • sdcm.tester: Contains the base test class, see below.
2. A data directory, aptly named data_dir. It contains:
   • scylla repo file (to prepare a loader node)
   • Files that need to be copied to cluster nodes as part of setup/test procedures
   • yaml file containing test config data:
     • AWS machine image ids
     • Security groups
     • Number of loader nodes
     • Number of cluster nodes
   • SCT dashboards definition files for Grafana
3. Python files with tests. The convention is that test files have the _test.py suffix.

Currently we support Red Hat like operating systems that use YUM package manager. SCT tests can run on two environments: on local RHEL like OS (tested on Fedora) or inside SCT docker container. Note: When running following commands, please clone this repo and cd into it. During SCT environment setup, you will be asked to configure your AWS CLI tool. This is needed to retrieve QA private keys from secure S3 Bucket during automated setup. The keys will be needed to connect to the Scylla clusters under test via SSH.

Use following values when running aws configure

• region -> us-east-1
• Default output format -> None
• aws_access_key_id, aws_secret_access_key

As mentioned before, instead of installing all the prerequisites on your machine, you can also use SCT Docker container (aka Hydra) to run SCT avocado tests:

sudo ./install-hydra.sh
aws configure

Notes for Hydra

• When running Hydra for the first time it will build the SCT Docker image. Please be patient and let the process complete till the end
• Your home directory is exposed into the docker container to the root user, so all the SSH/AWS/GCE configurations are "automatically" visible to the SCT container.
• SCT is the current working directory in the container ( Run hydra ls -l to check)
• QA private keys existence is checked each time when Hydra is run.
• Hydra will check for update on each run and when update will be available the Docker image will be rebuilt

To run SCT tests locally run following:

sudo ./install-prereqs.sh
aws configure
./get-qa-ssh-keys.sh

Example running avocado using Hydra on AWS using sample.yaml configuration file:

hydra "avocado --show test run longevity_test.py:LongevityTest.test_custom_time --multiplex tests/sample.yaml"

You can also enter the containerized SCT environment using:

hydra bash

Depending on which backend hardware/cloud provider/virtualization you will use, relevant configuration of those backend services should be done.

TBD

Take a look at the data_dir/scylla.yaml file. It contains a number of configurable test parameters, such as DB cluster instance types and AMI IDs. In this example, we're assuming that you have copied data_dir/scylla.yaml to data_dir/your_config.yaml.

All the test run configurations are stored in tests directory.

Important: Some tests use custom hardcoded operations due to their nature, so those tests won't honor what is set in data_dir/your_config.yaml.

You might want to setup libvirt to access the qemu system session as your regular user. You might want to refer to [3], in case that is not available, here's the gist of the procedure:

With Fedora 20 onwards, virt-manager implements PolicyKit (I recommend reading the man page). If you want to allow a certain group of users access to virt-manager without providing root credentials, you can create a new rules file in /etc/polkit-1/rules.d and add a rule to permit users who are local, logged in, and in the group you specify (wheel in the example below) access to the virt-manager software:

sudo vim /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/80-libvirt.rules

And then write:

polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
  if (action.id == "org.libvirt.unix.manage" && subject.local && subject.active && subject.isInGroup("wheel")) {
      return polkit.Result.YES;
  }
});

Change your current working directory to this test suite base directory, then run avocado. Example command line:

avocado run longevity_test.py:LongevityTest.test_custom_time --multiplex data_dir/your_config.yaml --filter-only /run/backends/aws/us_east_1 /run/databases/scylla --filter-out /run/backends/libvirt /run/backends/openstack /run/backends/gce --open-browser

This command line is to run the test method test_custom_time, in the class Longevitytest, that lies inside the file longevity_test.py, and the test will run using the AWS data defined in the branch us_east_1 of data_dir/your_config.yaml. The flag --open-browser opens the avocado test job report on your default browser at the end of avocado's execution.

If you want to use the us_west_2 region, you can always change /run/regions/us_east_1 to /run/regions/us_west_2 in the command above. You can also change the value /run/databases/scylla bit to /run/databases/cassandra to run the same test on a cassandra node.

Also, please note that scylla.yaml is a sample configuration. On your organization, you really have to update values with ones you actually have access to.

You'll see something like:

JOB ID     : ca47ccbaa292c4d414e08f2167c41776f5c3da61
JOB LOG    : /home/lmr/avocado/job-results/job-2016-01-05T20.45-ca47ccb/job.log
TESTS      : 1
 (1/1) longevity_test.py:LongevityTest.test_custom_time : /

A throbber, that will spin until the test ends. This will hopefully evolve to:

JOB ID     : ca47ccbaa292c4d414e08f2167c41776f5c3da61
JOB LOG    : /home/lmr/avocado/job-results/job-2016-01-05T20.45-ca47ccb/job.log
TESTS      : 1
 (1/1) longevity_test.py:LongevityTest.test_custom_time : PASS (1083.19 s)
RESULTS    : PASS 1 | ERROR 0 | FAIL 0 | SKIP 0 | WARN 0 | INTERRUPT 0
JOB HTML   : /home/lmr/avocado/job-results/job-2016-01-05T20.45-ca47ccb/html/results.html
TIME       : 1083.19 s

In order to run tests using the libvirt backend, you'll need:

1. One qcow2 base image with CentOS 7 installed. This image needs to have a user named 'centos', and this user needs to be configured to not require a password when running commands with sudo.
2. cp data_dir/scylla.yaml data_dir/your_config.yaml
3. Edit the configuration file (data_dir/your_config.yaml) to add the path to the CentOS image mentioned on step 1, as well as tweak values present in the libvirt: session of that file. One of the values you might want to tweak is the scylla yum repository used to install scylla on the CentOS 7 VM.

With that said and done, you can run your test using the command line:

avocado run longevity_test.py:LongevityTest.test_custom_time --multiplex data_dir/scylla-lmr.yaml --filter-only /run/backends/libvirt /run/databases/scylla --filter-out /run/backends/aws /run/backends/openstack /run/backends/gce --open-browser

In order to run tests using the openstack backend, you'll need:

1. A deployed OpenStack lab
2. One CentOS 7 image. This image needs to have a user named 'centos', and this user needs to be configured to not require a password when running commands with sudo.
3. cp data_dir/scylla.yaml data_dir/your_config.yaml
4. Edit the configuration file (data_dir/your_config.yaml) to tweak values present in the openstack: session of that file. One of the values you might want to tweak is the scylla yum repository used to install scylla on the CentOS 7 image.

With that said and done, you can run your test using the command line:

avocado run longevity_test.py:LongevityTest.test_custom_time --multiplex data_dir/scylla-lmr.yaml --filter-only /run/backends/libvirt /run/databases/scylla --filter-out /run/backends/aws /run/backends/libvirt /run/backends/gce --open-browser

In order to run tests using the GCE backend, you'll need:

1. A GCE account
2. cp data_dir/scylla.yaml data_dir/your_config.yaml
3. Edit the configuration file (data_dir/your_config.yaml) to tweak values present in the gce: session of that file. One of the values you might want to tweak is the scylla yum repository used to install scylla on the CentOS 7 image.

With that said and done, you can run your test using the command line:

avocado run longevity_test.py:LongevityTest.test_custom_time --multiplex data_dir/scylla-lmr.yaml --filter-only /run/backends/libvirt /run/databases/scylla --filter-out /run/backends/aws /run/backends/libvirt /run/backends/openstack --open-browser

What you can do while the test is running to see what's happening:

tail -f ~/avocado/job-results/latest/job.log

or:

tail -f ~/avocado/job-results/latest/test-results/longevity_test.py\:LongevityTest.test_custom_time/debug.log

At the end of the test, there's a path to an HTML file with the job report. The flag --open-browser actually opens that at the end of the test.

On a high level overview, the test operations are:

1. Instantiate a Cluster DB, with the specified number of nodes (the number of nodes can be specified through the config file, or the test writer can set a specific number depending on the test needs).
2. Instantiate a set of loader nodes. They will be the ones to initiate cassandra stress, and possibly other database stress inducing activities.
3. Instantiate a set of monitoring nodes. They will run prometheus [3], to store metrics information about the database cluster, and also grafana [4], to let the user see real time dashboards of said metrics while the test is running. This is very useful in case you want to run the test suite and keep watching the behavior of each node.
4. Wait until the loaders are ready (SSH up and cassandra-stress is present)
5. Wait until the DB nodes are ready (SSH up and DB services are up, port 9042 occupied)

6. Wait until the monitoring nodes are ready. If you are following the job log, you will see a message with the address you can point your browser to while the test is executing :

   02:09:37 INFO | Node lmr-scylla-monitor-node-235cdfb0-1 [54.86.66.156 | 172.30.0.105] (seed: None): Grafana Web UI: http://54.86.66.156:3000

1. Loader nodes execute cassandra stress on the DB cluster (optional)
2. If configured, a Nemesis class, will execute periodically, introducing some disruption activity to the cluster (stop/start a node, destroy data, kill scylla processes on a node). the nemesis starts after an interval, to give cassandra-stress on step 1 to stabilize

Keep in mind that the suite libraries are flexible, and will allow you to set scenarios that differ from this base one.

In order to try to establish a timeline of what is going on, we opted for dumping a lot of information in the test main log. That includes:

1. Labels for each Node and cluster, including SSH access info in case you want to debug what's going on. Example:

   15:43:23 DEBUG| Node lmr-scylla-db-node-88c994d5-1 [54.183.240.195 | 172.31.18.109] (seed: None): SSH access -> 'ssh -i /var/tmp/lmr-longevity-test-8b95682d.pem centos@54.183.240.195'
   ...
   15:47:52 INFO | Cluster lmr-scylla-db-cluster-88c994d5 (AMI: ami-1da7d17d Type: c4.xlarge): (6/6) DB nodes ready. Time elapsed: 79 s

2. Scylla logs for all the DB nodes, logged as they happen. Example line:

   15:44:35 DEBUG| [54.183.193.208] [stdout] Feb 10 17:44:17 ip-172-30-0-123.ec2.internal systemd[1]: Starting Scylla Server...

3. Coredump watching thread, that runs every 30 seconds and will tell you if scylla dumped core

4. Cassandra-stress output. As cassandra-stress runs only after all the nodes are properly set up, you'll see it clearly separated from the initial flurry of Node init information:

   15:47:55 INFO | [54.193.84.90] Running '/usr/bin/ssh -a -x  -o ControlPath=/var/tmp/ssh-masterTQ3hZu/socket -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/var/tmp/tmpOjFA9Q -o BatchMode=yes -o ConnectTimeout=300 -o ServerAliveInterval=300 -l centos -p 22 -i /var/tmp/lmr-longevity-test-8b95682d.pem 54.193.84.90 "cassandra-stress write cl=QUORUM duration=30m -schema 'replication(factor=3)' -port jmx=6868 -mode cql3 native -rate threads=4 -node 172.31.18.109"'
   15:48:02 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] INFO  17:48:01 Found Netty's native epoll transport in the classpath, using it
   15:48:03 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] INFO  17:48:03 Using data-center name 'datacenter1' for DCAwareRoundRobinPolicy (if this is incorrect, please provide the correct datacenter name with DCAwareRoundRobinPolicy constructor)
   15:48:03 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] INFO  17:48:03 New Cassandra host /172.31.18.109:9042 added
   15:48:03 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] INFO  17:48:03 New Cassandra host /172.31.18.114:9042 added
   15:48:03 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] INFO  17:48:03 New Cassandra host /172.31.18.113:9042 added
   15:48:03 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] INFO  17:48:03 New Cassandra host /172.31.18.112:9042 added
   15:48:03 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] INFO  17:48:03 New Cassandra host /172.31.18.111:9042 added
   15:48:03 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] INFO  17:48:03 New Cassandra host /172.31.18.110:9042 added
   15:48:03 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] Connected to cluster: lmr-scylla-db-cluster-88c994d5
   ...

5. As the DB logs thread will still be active, you'll see messages from nodes (normally compaction) mingled with cassandra-stress output. Example:

   16:01:43 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       2265875,    4887,    4887,    4887,     0.8,     0.6,     2.5,     3.6,     9.8,    13.8,  493.7,  0.00632,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   16:01:44 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       2270561,    4679,    4679,    4679,     0.8,     0.6,     2.5,     3.6,     8.1,    10.1,  494.7,  0.00630,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   16:01:45 DEBUG| [54.183.240.195] [stdout] Feb 10 18:01:45 ip-172-31-18-109 scylla[2103]: INFO  [shard 1] compaction - Compacting [/var/lib/scylla/data/keyspace1/standard1-71035bf0d01e11e58c82000000000001/keyspace1-standard1-ka-5-Data.db:level=0, /var/lib/scylla/data/keyspace1/standard1-71035bf0d01e11e58c82000000000001/keyspace1-standard1-ka-9-Data.db:level=0, /var/lib/scylla/data/keyspace1/standard1-71035bf0d01e11e58c82000000000001/keyspace1-standard1-ka-13-Data.db:level=0, /var/lib/scylla/data/keyspace1/standard1-71035bf0d01e11e58c82000000000001/keyspace1-standard1-ka-17-Data.db:level=0, ]
   16:01:45 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       2275544,    4963,    4963,    4963,     0.8,     0.6,     2.4,     3.4,     9.7,    18.9,  495.7,  0.00629,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   16:01:46 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       2280432,    4883,    4883,    4883,     0.8,     0.6,     2.5,     3.6,    15.4,    20.2,  496.7,  0.00628,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   16:01:47 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       2285011,    4562,    4562,    4562,     0.9,     0.6,     2.5,     3.8,    18.2,    30.9,  497.7,  0.00627,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0

6. You'll also see Nemesis messages. The cool thing about this is that you can see the cluster reaction to the disruption event. Here's an example of a nemesis that stops and then starts the AWS instance of one of our DB nodes. Ellipsis were added for brevity purposes. You can see the gossiping for the node down, then for the Node up, all of that happening while the loader nodes churning cassandra-stress output:

   15:57:55 DEBUG| sdcm.nemesis.StopStartMonkey: <function disrupt at 0x7fd5aec38c80> Start
   15:57:55 INFO | sdcm.nemesis.StopStartMonkey: Stop Node lmr-scylla-db-node-88c994d5-3 [54.193.37.181 | 172.31.18.111] (seed: False) then restart it
   15:57:55 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1257018,    4989,    4989,    4989,     0.8,     0.6,     2.4,     2.9,     9.9,    23.1,  265.3,  0.00651,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   15:57:56 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1262289,    5248,    5248,    5248,     0.7,     0.6,     2.4,     2.8,     5.9,     7.0,  266.4,  0.00650,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   15:57:57 DEBUG| [54.193.37.181] [stdout] Feb 10 17:57:56 ip-172-31-18-111 systemd[1]: Stopping Scylla JMX...
   15:57:57 DEBUG| [54.183.195.134] [stdout] Feb 10 17:57:57 ip-172-31-18-112 scylla[2108]: INFO  [shard 0] gossip - InetAddress 172.31.18.111 is now DOWN
   15:57:57 DEBUG| [54.183.193.208] [stdout] Feb 10 17:57:57 ip-172-31-18-113 scylla[2114]: INFO  [shard 0] gossip - InetAddress 172.31.18.111 is now DOWN
   15:57:57 DEBUG| [54.193.37.222] [stdout] Feb 10 17:57:57 ip-172-31-18-114 scylla[2098]: INFO  [shard 0] gossip - InetAddress 172.31.18.111 is now DOWN
   15:57:57 DEBUG| [54.193.61.5] [stdout] Feb 10 17:57:57 ip-172-31-18-110 scylla[2107]: INFO  [shard 0] gossip - InetAddress 172.31.18.111 is now DOWN
   15:57:57 DEBUG| [54.183.240.195] [stdout] Feb 10 17:57:57 ip-172-31-18-109 scylla[2103]: INFO  [shard 0] gossip - InetAddress 172.31.18.111 is now DOWN
   15:57:57 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1267035,    4739,    4739,    4739,     0.8,     0.6,     2.4,     4.8,    17.7,    30.2,  267.4,  0.00647,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   ...
   15:58:01 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1283680,    4219,    4219,    4219,     0.9,     0.6,     2.6,     4.4,     8.1,    11.9,  271.4,  0.00651,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   15:58:02 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1285139,    1452,    1452,    1452,     2.7,     1.7,     9.2,    22.3,    54.8,    55.2,  272.4,  0.00699,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   15:58:02 DEBUG| [54.183.240.195] [stdout] Feb 10 17:58:02 ip-172-31-18-109 scylla[2103]: INFO  [shard 0] rpc - client 172.31.18.111: client connection dropped: read: Connection reset by peer
   15:58:02 DEBUG| [54.193.37.222] [stdout] Feb 10 17:58:02 ip-172-31-18-114 scylla[2098]: INFO  [shard 0] rpc - client 172.31.18.111: client connection dropped: read: Connection reset by peer
   15:58:02 DEBUG| [54.193.61.5] [stdout] Feb 10 17:58:02 ip-172-31-18-110 scylla[2107]: INFO  [shard 0] rpc - client 172.31.18.111: client connection dropped: read: Connection reset by peer
   15:58:02 DEBUG| [54.183.193.208] [stdout] Feb 10 17:58:02 ip-172-31-18-113 scylla[2114]: INFO  [shard 0] rpc - client 172.31.18.111: client connection dropped: read: Connection reset by peer
   15:58:03 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1288782,    3515,    3515,    3515,     1.1,     0.6,     2.6,     7.7,    56.3,   143.6,  273.4,  0.00701,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   ...
   15:58:59 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1532519,    4846,    4846,    4846,     0.8,     0.6,     2.5,     3.8,     9.5,    10.9,  328.8,  0.00715,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   15:58:59 DEBUG| Node lmr-scylla-db-node-88c994d5-3 [54.193.37.181 | 172.31.18.111] (seed: None): Got new public IP 54.67.92.86
   15:59:00 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1537219,    4681,    4681,    4681,     0.8,     0.6,     2.5,     3.9,    18.8,    28.3,  329.8,  0.00713,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   ...
   15:59:51 DEBUG| [54.193.37.222] [stdout] Feb 10 17:59:51 ip-172-31-18-114 scylla[2098]: INFO  [shard 0] gossip - Node 172.31.18.111 has restarted, now UP
   15:59:52 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1767965,    4869,    4869,    4869,     0.8,     0.6,     2.5,     3.0,    12.3,    15.0,  382.1,  0.00677,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   15:59:52 DEBUG| [54.183.240.195] [stdout] Feb 10 17:59:52 ip-172-31-18-109 scylla[2103]: INFO  [shard 0] gossip - Node 172.31.18.111 has restarted, now UP
   15:59:53 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1771279,    3291,    3291,    3291,     1.2,     0.6,     3.4,    13.2,    32.3,    39.8,  383.1,  0.00680,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   15:59:53 DEBUG| [54.193.61.5] [stdout] Feb 10 17:59:53 ip-172-31-18-110 scylla[2107]: INFO  [shard 0] gossip - Node 172.31.18.111 has restarted, now UP
   15:59:54 DEBUG| [54.193.84.90] [stdout] total,       1775909,    4622,    4622,    4622,     0.9,     0.6,     2.5,     3.7,     9.9,    16.3,  384.1,  0.00678,      0,      0,       0,       0,       0,       0
   15:59:54 DEBUG| [54.183.195.134] [stdout] Feb 10 17:59:54 ip-172-31-18-112 scylla[2108]: INFO  [shard 0] gossip - Node 172.31.18.111 has restarted, now UP

With all that information going, the main log is hard to read, but at least you now have an outline of what is going on. We store the scylla logs on per node files, you can find them all in the test log directory (the avocado HTML report will help you locate and visualize all those files, just click on the test name link and you'll see the dir structure.

• Set up buildable HTML documentation, and a hosted version of it.
• Write more tests, improve test API (always in progress, I guess).

• No test API guide. Bear with us while we set up hosted test API documentation, and take a look at the current tests and the sdcm library for more information.

• [1] http://avocado-framework.github.io/
• [2] https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/45805/how-to-use-virt-manager-as-a-non-root-user/
• [3] https://prometheus.io/

* [4] http://grafana.org/ .. _repo: https://github.com/scylladb/scylla-grafana-monitoring