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Ganeti automatic instance allocation

====================================

Documents Ganeti version 2.1

.. contents::

Introduction

------------

Currently in Ganeti the admin has to specify the exact locations for

an instance's node(s). This prevents a completely automatic node

evacuation, and is in general a nuisance.

The *iallocator* framework will enable automatic placement via

external scripts, which allows customization of the cluster layout per

the site's requirements.

User-visible changes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are two parts of the ganeti operation that are impacted by the

auto-allocation: how the cluster knows what the allocator algorithms

are and how the admin uses these in creating instances.

An allocation algorithm is just the filename of a program installed in

a defined list of directories.

Cluster configuration

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At configure time, the list of the directories can be selected via the

``--with-iallocator-search-path=LIST`` option, where *LIST* is a

comma-separated list of directories. If not given, this defaults to

``$libdir/ganeti/iallocators``, i.e. for an installation under

``/usr``, this will be ``/usr/lib/ganeti/iallocators``.

Ganeti will then search for allocator script in the configured list,

using the first one whose filename matches the one given by the user.

Command line interface changes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The node selection options in instanece add and instance replace disks

can be replace by the new ``--iallocator=NAME`` option (shortened to

``-I``), which will cause the auto-assignement of nodes with the

passed iallocator. The selected node(s) will be show as part of the

command output.

IAllocator API

--------------

The protocol for communication between Ganeti and an allocator script

will be the following:

#. ganeti launches the program with a single argument, a filename that

   contains a JSON-encoded structure (the input message)

#. if the script finishes with exit code different from zero, it is

   considered a general failure and the full output will be reported to

   the users; this can be the case when the allocator can't parse the

   input message

#. if the allocator finishes with exit code zero, it is expected to

   output (on its stdout) a JSON-encoded structure (the response)

Input message

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The input message will be the JSON encoding of a dictionary containing

the following:

version

  the version of the protocol; this document

  specifies version 2

cluster_name

  the cluster name

cluster_tags

  the list of cluster tags

enabled_hypervisors

  the list of enabled hypervisors

request

  a dictionary containing the request data:

  type

    the request type; this can be either ``allocate``, ``relocate`` or

    ``multi-evacuate``; the ``allocate`` request is used when a new

    instance needs to be placed on the cluster, while the ``relocate``

    request is used when an existing instance needs to be moved within

    the cluster; the ``multi-evacuate`` protocol requests that the

    script computes the optimal relocate solution for all secondary

    instances of the given nodes

  The following keys are needed in allocate/relocate mode:

  name

    the name of the instance; if the request is a realocation, then this

    name will be found in the list of instances (see below), otherwise

    is the FQDN of the new instance

  required_nodes

    how many nodes should the algorithm return; while this information

    can be deduced from the instace's disk template, it's better if

    this computation is left to Ganeti as then allocator scripts are

    less sensitive to changes to the disk templates

  disk_space_total

    the total disk space that will be used by this instance on the

    (new) nodes; again, this information can be computed from the list

    of instance disks and its template type, but Ganeti is better

    suited to compute it

  If the request is an allocation, then there are extra fields in the

  request dictionary:

  disks

    list of dictionaries holding the disk definitions for this

    instance (in the order they are exported to the hypervisor):

    mode

      either ``ro`` or ``rw`` denoting if the disk is read-only or

      writable

    size

      the size of this disk in mebibytes

  nics

    a list of dictionaries holding the network interfaces for this

    instance, containing:

    ip

      the IP address that Ganeti know for this instance, or null

    mac

      the MAC address for this interface

    bridge

      the bridge to which this interface will be connected

  vcpus

    the number of VCPUs for the instance

  disk_template

    the disk template for the instance

  memory

   the memory size for the instance

  os

   the OS type for the instance

  tags

    the list of the instance's tags

  hypervisor

    the hypervisor of this instance

  If the request is of type relocate, then there is one more entry in

  the request dictionary, named ``relocate_from``, and it contains a

  list of nodes to move the instance away from; note that with Ganeti

  2.0, this list will always contain a single node, the current

  secondary of the instance.

  The multi-evacuate mode has instead a single request argument:

  nodes

    the names of the nodes to be evacuated

nodegroups

  a dictionary with the data for the cluster's node groups; it is keyed

  on the group UUID, and the values are a dictionary with the following

  keys:

  name

    the node group name

  alloc_policy

    the allocation policy of the node group

instances

  a dictionary with the data for the current existing instance on the

  cluster, indexed by instance name; the contents are similar to the

  instance definitions for the allocate mode, with the addition of:

  admin_up

    if this instance is set to run (but not the actual status of the

    instance)

  nodes

    list of nodes on which this instance is placed; the primary node

    of the instance is always the first one

nodes

  dictionary with the data for the nodes in the cluster, indexed by

  the node name; the dict contains [*]_ :

  total_disk

    the total disk size of this node (mebibytes)

  free_disk

    the free disk space on the node

  total_memory

    the total memory size

  free_memory

    free memory on the node; note that currently this does not take

    into account the instances which are down on the node

  total_cpus

    the physical number of CPUs present on the machine; depending on

    the hypervisor, this might or might not be equal to how many CPUs

    the node operating system sees;

  primary_ip

    the primary IP address of the node

  secondary_ip

    the secondary IP address of the node (the one used for the DRBD

    replication); note that this can be the same as the primary one

  tags

    list with the tags of the node

  master_candidate:

    a boolean flag denoting whether this node is a master candidate

  drained:

    a boolean flag denoting whether this node is being drained

  offline:

    a boolean flag denoting whether this node is offline

  i_pri_memory:

    total memory required by primary instances

  i_pri_up_memory:

    total memory required by running primary instances

  group:

    the node group that this node belongs to

  No allocations should be made on nodes having either the ``drained``

  or ``offline`` flags set. More details about these of node status

  flags is available in the manpage :manpage:`ganeti(7)`.

.. [*] Note that no run-time data is present for offline, drained or

   non-vm_capable nodes; this means the tags total_memory,

   reserved_memory, free_memory, total_disk, free_disk, total_cpus,

   i_pri_memory and i_pri_up memory will be absent

Response message

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The response message is much more simple than the input one. It is

also a dict having three keys:

success

  a boolean value denoting if the allocation was successful or not

info

  a string with information from the scripts; if the allocation fails,

  this will be shown to the user

result

  the output of the algorithm; even if the algorithm failed

  (i.e. success is false), this must be returned as an empty list

  for allocate/relocate, this is the list of node(s) for the instance;

  note that the length of this list must equal the ``requested_nodes``

  entry in the input message, otherwise Ganeti will consider the result

  as failed

  for multi-evacuation mode, this is a list of lists; each element of

  the list is a list of instance name and the new secondary node

.. note:: Current Ganeti version accepts either ``result`` or ``nodes``

   as a backwards-compatibility measure (older versions only supported

   ``nodes``)

Examples

--------

Input messages to scripts

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Input message, new instance allocation::

  {

    "cluster_tags": [],

    "request": {

      "required_nodes": 2,

      "name": "instance3.example.com",

      "tags": [

        "type:test",

        "owner:foo"

      ],

      "type": "allocate",

      "disks": [

        {

          "mode": "w",

          "size": 1024

        },

        {

          "mode": "w",

          "size": 2048

        }

      ],

      "nics": [

        {

          "ip": null,

          "mac": "00:11:22:33:44:55",

          "bridge": null

        }

      ],

      "vcpus": 1,

      "disk_template": "drbd",

      "memory": 2048,

      "disk_space_total": 3328,

      "os": "debootstrap+default"

    },

    "cluster_name": "cluster1.example.com",

    "instances": {

      "instance1.example.com": {

        "tags": [],

        "should_run": false,

        "disks": [

          {

            "mode": "w",

            "size": 64

          },

          {

            "mode": "w",

            "size": 512

          }

        ],

        "nics": [

          {

            "ip": null,

            "mac": "aa:00:00:00:60:bf",

            "bridge": "xen-br0"

          }

        ],

        "vcpus": 1,

        "disk_template": "plain",

        "memory": 128,

        "nodes": [

          "nodee1.com"

        ],

        "os": "debootstrap+default"

      },

      "instance2.example.com": {

        "tags": [],

        "should_run": false,

        "disks": [

          {

            "mode": "w",

            "size": 512

          },

          {

            "mode": "w",

            "size": 256

          }

        ],

        "nics": [

          {

            "ip": null,

            "mac": "aa:00:00:55:f8:38",

            "bridge": "xen-br0"

          }

        ],

        "vcpus": 1,

        "disk_template": "drbd",

        "memory": 512,

        "nodes": [

          "node2.example.com",

          "node3.example.com"

        ],

        "os": "debootstrap+default"

      }

    },

    "version": 1,

    "nodes": {

      "node1.example.com": {

        "total_disk": 858276,

        "primary_ip": "198.51.100.1",

        "secondary_ip": "192.0.2.1",

        "tags": [],

        "free_memory": 3505,

        "free_disk": 856740,

        "total_memory": 4095

      },

      "node2.example.com": {

        "total_disk": 858240,

        "primary_ip": "198.51.100.2",

        "secondary_ip": "192.0.2.2",

        "tags": ["test"],

        "free_memory": 3505,

        "free_disk": 848320,

        "total_memory": 4095

      },

      "node3.example.com.com": {

        "total_disk": 572184,

        "primary_ip": "198.51.100.3",

        "secondary_ip": "192.0.2.3",

        "tags": [],

        "free_memory": 3505,

        "free_disk": 570648,

        "total_memory": 4095

      }

    }

  }

Input message, reallocation. Since only the request entry in the input

message is changed, we show only this changed entry::

  "request": {

    "relocate_from": [

      "node3.example.com"

    ],

    "required_nodes": 1,

    "type": "relocate",

    "name": "instance2.example.com",

    "disk_space_total": 832

  },

Input message, node evacuation::

  "request": {

    "evac_nodes": [

      "node2"

    ],

    "type": "multi-evacuate"

  },

Response messages

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Successful response message::

  {

    "info": "Allocation successful",

    "result": [

      "node2.example.com",

      "node1.example.com"

    ],

    "success": true

  }

Failed response message::

  {

    "info": "Can't find a suitable node for position 2 (already selected: node2.example.com)",

    "result": [],

    "success": false

  }

Successful node evacuation message::

  {

    "info": "Request successful",

    "result": [

      [

        "instance1",

        "node3"

      ],

      [

        "instance2",

        "node1"

      ]

    ],

    "success": true

  }

Command line messages

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

::

  # gnt-instance add -t plain -m 2g --os-size 1g --swap-size 512m --iallocator hail -o debootstrap+default instance3

  Selected nodes for the instance: node1.example.com

  * creating instance disks...

  [...]

  # gnt-instance add -t plain -m 3400m --os-size 1g --swap-size 512m --iallocator hail -o debootstrap+default instance4

  Failure: prerequisites not met for this operation:

  Can't compute nodes using iallocator 'hail': Can't find a suitable node for position 1 (already selected: )

  # gnt-instance add -t drbd -m 1400m --os-size 1g --swap-size 512m --iallocator hail -o debootstrap+default instance5

  Failure: prerequisites not met for this operation:

  Can't compute nodes using iallocator 'hail': Can't find a suitable node for position 2 (already selected: node1.example.com)

Reference implementation

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ganeti's default iallocator is "hail" which is part of the separate

ganeti-htools project. In order to see its source code please clone

``git://git.ganeti.org/htools.git``. Note that htools is implemented

using the Haskell programming language.

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