Provide configurable 'pools' of instantly-available (running) virtual machines
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Rick Bradley e9fae3fab2 [QENG-4075] Refactor statsd methods / classes
Prior to this we could easily run into situations where `statds_prefix` would
be `nil` (and possibly the `statsd` handle itself). There was some significant
complexity and brittleness in how statsd was set up.

Refactored so that:

 - `statsd_prefix` is no longer exposed to any callers of statsd methods
 - there is now a `Vmpooler::DummyStatsd` class which can be returned when we are not actually going to publish stats, but would like to keep the calling interface consistent
 - setup of the statsd handle is via just passing in `config[:statsd]`, if `nil`, this will result in a dummy handle being return
 - defaulting of `server` values was fixed -- this did not actually work in the previous implementation. `config[:statsd][:server]` is now required.
 - tests use a `DummyStatsd` instance instead of an rspec double.
 - calls to `statsd.increment` were taking incorrect arguments (some our fault, some part of the prior implementation), and were not collecting data on which pools were "invalid" or "empty". Fixed this and are now explicitly tracking the invalid/empty pool names.
2016-07-12 13:15:48 -05:00
lib [QENG-4075] Refactor statsd methods / classes 2016-07-12 13:15:48 -05:00
scripts Updated YAML config variables 2016-01-05 13:59:05 -06:00
spec [QENG-4075] Refactor statsd methods / classes 2016-07-12 13:15:48 -05:00
.gitignore Improved tests for vmpooler (#152) 2016-06-07 16:13:39 -05:00
.travis.yml Improved tests for vmpooler (#152) 2016-06-07 16:13:39 -05:00
API.md [QENG-3919] Make vmpooler checkouts be all or nothing (#153) 2016-05-27 12:49:57 -05:00
Gemfile Revert "Revert "Merge pull request #155 from shermdog/RE-7014-cinext"" 2016-07-11 15:20:43 -05:00
LICENSE Update license copyright 2016-01-14 15:48:24 -08:00
Rakefile Show test contexts and names 2015-07-06 15:40:02 -07:00
README.md Add info about vmfloaty 2016-06-08 14:18:09 -07:00
vmpooler [QENG-4075] Refactor statsd methods / classes 2016-07-12 13:15:48 -05:00
vmpooler.yaml.example Revert "Revert "Merge pull request #155 from shermdog/RE-7014-cinext"" 2016-07-11 15:20:43 -05:00

vmpooler

vmpooler

vmpooler provides configurable 'pools' of instantly-available (running) virtual machines.

Usage

At Puppet Labs we run acceptance tests on thousands of disposable VMs every day. Dynamic cloning of VM templates initially worked fine for this, but added several seconds to each test run and was unable to account for failed clone tasks. By pushing these operations to a backend service, we were able to both speed up tests and eliminate test failures due to underlying infrastructure failures.

Installation

Prerequisites

vmpooler requires the following Ruby gems be installed:

It also requires that a Redis server exists somewhere, as this is the datastore used for vmpooler's inventory and queueing services.

Configuration

The following YAML configuration sets up two pools, debian-7-i386 and debian-7-x86_64, which contain 5 running VMs each:

---
:vsphere:
  server: 'vsphere.company.com'
  username: 'vmpooler'
  password: 'swimsw1msw!m'

:redis:
  server: 'redis.company.com'

:config:
  logfile: '/var/log/vmpooler.log'

:pools:
  - name: 'debian-7-i386'
    template: 'Templates/debian-7-i386'
    folder: 'Pooled VMs/debian-7-i386'
    pool: 'Pooled VMs/debian-7-i386'
    datastore: 'vmstorage'
    size: 5
  - name: 'debian-7-x86_64'
    template: 'Templates/debian-7-x86_64'
    folder: 'Pooled VMs/debian-7-x86_64'
    pool: 'Pooled VMs/debian-7-x86_64'
    datastore: 'vmstorage'
    size: 5

See the provided YAML configuration example, vmpooler.yaml.example, for additional configuration options and parameters.

Template set-up

Template set-up is left as an exercise to the reader. Somehow, either via PXE, embedded bootstrap scripts, or some other method -- clones of VM templates need to be able to set their hostname, register themselves in your DNS, and be resolvable by the vmpooler application after completing the clone task and booting up.

API and Dashboard

vmpooler provides an API and web front-end (dashboard) on port :4567. See the provided YAML configuration example, vmpooler.yaml.example, to specify an alternative port to listen on.

API

vmpooler provides a REST API for VM management. See the API documentation for more information.

Dashboard

A dashboard is provided to offer real-time statistics and historical graphs. It looks like this:

dashboard

Graphite is required for historical data retrieval. See the provided YAML configuration example, vmpooler.yaml.example, for details.

Command-line Utility

  • The vmpooler_client.py CLI utility provides easy access to the vmpooler service. The tool is cross-platform and written in Python.
  • vmfloaty is a ruby based CLI tool and scripting library written in ruby.

Build status

Build Status

License

vmpooler is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE file for more details.