hbal

Langue: en

Version: 333690 (ubuntu - 24/10/10)

Section: 1 (Commandes utilisateur)

NAME

hbal - Cluster balancer for Ganeti

SYNOPSIS

hbal [backend options...] [algorithm options...] [reporting options...]

hbal --version

Backend options:
[ -m cluster ] | [ -L[path] [-X]] | [ -t data-file ]
Algorithm options:
[ --max-cpu cpu-ratio ] [ --min-disk disk-ratio ] [ -l limit ] [ -e score ] [ -O name... ] [ --no-disk-moves ] [ -U util-file ] [ --evac-mode ] [ --exclude-instances inst... ]
Reporting options:
[ -C[file] ] [ -p[fields] ] [ --print-instances ] [ -o ] [ -v... | -q ]

DESCRIPTION

hbal is a cluster balancer that looks at the current state of the cluster (nodes with their total and free disk, memory, etc.) and instance placement and computes a series of steps designed to bring the cluster into a better state.

The algorithm used is designed to be stable (i.e. it will give you the same results when restarting it from the middle of the solution) and reasonably fast. It is not, however, designed to be a perfect algorithm --- it is possible to make it go into a corner from which it can find no improvement, because it looks only one "step" ahead.

By default, the program will show the solution incrementally as it is computed, in a somewhat cryptic format; for getting the actual Ganeti command list, use the -C option.

ALGORITHM

The program works in independent steps; at each step, we compute the best instance move that lowers the cluster score.

The possible move type for an instance are combinations of failover/migrate and replace-disks such that we change one of the instance nodes, and the other one remains (but possibly with changed role, e.g. from primary it becomes secondary). The list is:

---
failover (f)
---
replace secondary (r)
---
replace primary, a composite move (f, r, f)
---
failover and replace secondary, also composite (f, r)
---
replace secondary and failover, also composite (r, f)

We don't do the only remaining possibility of replacing both nodes (r,f,r,f or the equivalent f,r,f,r) since these move needs an exhaustive search over both candidate primary and secondary nodes, and is O(n*n) in the number of nodes. Furthermore, it doesn't seems to give better scores but will result in more disk replacements.

PLACEMENT RESTRICTIONS

At each step, we prevent an instance move if it would cause:

---
a node to go into N+1 failure state
---
an instance to move onto an offline node (offline nodes are either read from the cluster or declared with -O)
---
an exclusion-tag based conflict (exclusion tags are read from the cluster and/or defined via the --exclusion-tags option)
---
a max vcpu/pcpu ratio to be exceeded (configured via --max-cpu)
---
min disk free percentage to go below the configured limit (configured via --min-disk)

CLUSTER SCORING

As said before, the algorithm tries to minimise the cluster score at each step. Currently this score is computed as a sum of the following components:

---
standard deviation of the percent of free memory
---
standard deviation of the percent of reserved memory
---
standard deviation of the percent of free disk
---
count of nodes failing N+1 check
---
count of instances living (either as primary or secondary) on offline nodes
---
count of instances living (as primary) on offline nodes; this differs from the above metric by helping failover of such instances in 2-node clusters
---
standard deviation of the ratio of virtual-to-physical cpus (for primary instances of the node)
---
standard deviation of the dynamic load on the nodes, for cpus, memory, disk and network

The free memory and free disk values help ensure that all nodes are somewhat balanced in their resource usage. The reserved memory helps to ensure that nodes are somewhat balanced in holding secondary instances, and that no node keeps too much memory reserved for N+1. And finally, the N+1 percentage helps guide the algorithm towards eliminating N+1 failures, if possible.

Except for the N+1 failures and offline instances counts, we use the standard deviation since when used with values within a fixed range (we use percents expressed as values between zero and one) it gives consistent results across all metrics (there are some small issues related to different means, but it works generally well). The 'count' type values will have higher score and thus will matter more for balancing; thus these are better for hard constraints (like evacuating nodes and fixing N+1 failures). For example, the offline instances count (i.e. the number of instances living on offline nodes) will cause the algorithm to actively move instances away from offline nodes. This, coupled with the restriction on placement given by offline nodes, will cause evacuation of such nodes.

The dynamic load values need to be read from an external file (Ganeti doesn't supply them), and are computed for each node as: sum of primary instance cpu load, sum of primary instance memory load, sum of primary and secondary instance disk load (as DRBD generates write load on secondary nodes too in normal case and in degraded scenarios also read load), and sum of primary instance network load. An example of how to generate these values for input to hbal would be to track "xm list" for instance over a day and by computing the delta of the cpu values, and feed that via the -U option for all instances (and keep the other metrics as one). For the algorithm to work, all that is needed is that the values are consistent for a metric across all instances (e.g. all instances use cpu% to report cpu usage, and not something related to number of CPU seconds used if the CPUs are different), and that they are normalised to between zero and one. Note that it's recommended to not have zero as the load value for any instance metric since then secondary instances are not well balanced.

On a perfectly balanced cluster (all nodes the same size, all instances the same size and spread across the nodes equally), the values for all metrics would be zero. This doesn't happen too often in practice :)

OFFLINE INSTANCES

Since current Ganeti versions do not report the memory used by offline (down) instances, ignoring the run status of instances will cause wrong calculations. For this reason, the algorithm subtracts the memory size of down instances from the free node memory of their primary node, in effect simulating the startup of such instances.

EXCLUSION TAGS

The exclusion tags mechanism is designed to prevent instances which run the same workload (e.g. two DNS servers) to land on the same node, which would make the respective node a SPOF for the given service.

It works by tagging instances with certain tags and then building exclusion maps based on these. Which tags are actually used is configured either via the command line (option --exclusion-tags) or via adding them to the cluster tags:

--exclusion-tags=a,b
This will make all instance tags of the form a:*, b:* be considered for the exclusion map
cluster tags htools:iextags:a, htools:iextags:b
This will make instance tags a:*, b:* be considered for the exclusion map. More precisely, the suffix of cluster tags starting with htools:iextags: will become the prefix of the exclusion tags.

Both the above forms mean that two instances both having (e.g.) the tag a:foo or b:bar won't end on the same node.

OPTIONS

The options that can be passed to the program are as follows:
-C, --print-commands
Print the command list at the end of the run. Without this, the program will only show a shorter, but cryptic output.

Note that the moves list will be split into independent steps, called "jobsets", but only for visual inspection, not for actually parallelisation. It is not possible to parallelise these directly when executed via "gnt-instance" commands, since a compound command (e.g. failover and replace-disks) must be executed serially. Parallel execution is only possible when using the Luxi backend and the -L option.

The algorithm for splitting the moves into jobsets is by accumulating moves until the next move is touching nodes already touched by the current moves; this means we can't execute in parallel (due to resource allocation in Ganeti) and thus we start a new jobset.

-p, --print-nodes
Prints the before and after node status, in a format designed to allow the user to understand the node's most important parameters.

It is possible to customise the listed information by passing a comma-separated list of field names to this option (the field list is currently undocumented). By default, the node list will contain these informations:

F
a character denoting the status of the node, with '-' meaning an offline node, '*' meaning N+1 failure and blank meaning a good node
Name
the node name
t_mem
the total node memory
n_mem
the memory used by the node itself
i_mem
the memory used by instances
x_mem
amount memory which seems to be in use but cannot be determined why or by which instance; usually this means that the hypervisor has some overhead or that there are other reporting errors
f_mem
the free node memory
r_mem
the reserved node memory, which is the amount of free memory needed for N+1 compliance
t_dsk
total disk
f_dsk
free disk
pcpu
the number of physical cpus on the node
vcpu
the number of virtual cpus allocated to primary instances
pri
number of primary instances
sec
number of secondary instances
p_fmem
percent of free memory
p_fdsk
percent of free disk
r_cpu
ratio of virtual to physical cpus
lCpu
the dynamic CPU load (if the information is available)
lMem
the dynamic memory load (if the information is available)
lDsk
the dynamic disk load (if the information is available)
lNet
the dynamic net load (if the information is available)
--print-instances
Prints the before and after instance map. This is less useful as the node status, but it can help in understanding instance moves.
-o, --oneline
Only shows a one-line output from the program, designed for the case when one wants to look at multiple clusters at once and check their status.

The line will contain four fields:

---
initial cluster score
---
number of steps in the solution
---
final cluster score
---
improvement in the cluster score
-O name
This option (which can be given multiple times) will mark nodes as being offline. This means a couple of things:
---
instances won't be placed on these nodes, not even temporarily; e.g. the replace primary move is not available if the secondary node is offline, since this move requires a failover.
---
these nodes will not be included in the score calculation (except for the percentage of instances on offline nodes)
Note that hbal will also mark as offline any nodes which are reported by RAPI as such, or that have "?" in file-based input in any numeric fields.
-escore, --min-score=score
This parameter denotes the minimum score we are happy with and alters the computation in two ways:
---
if the cluster has the initial score lower than this value, then we don't enter the algorithm at all, and exit with success
---
during the iterative process, if we reach a score lower than this value, we exit the algorithm
The default value of the parameter is currently 1e-9 (chosen empirically).
--no-disk-moves
This parameter prevents hbal from using disk move (i.e. "gnt-instance replace-disks") operations. This will result in a much quicker balancing, but of course the improvements are limited. It is up to the user to decide when to use one or another.
--evac-mode
This parameter restricts the list of instances considered for moving to the ones living on offline/drained nodes. It can be used as a (bulk) replacement for Ganeti's own gnt-node evacuate, with the note that it doesn't guarantee full evacuation.
--exclude-instances instances
This parameter marks the given instances (as a comma-separated list) from being moved during the rebalance. Note that the instances must be given their full name (as reported by Ganeti).
-Uutil-file
This parameter specifies a file holding instance dynamic utilisation information that will be used to tweak the balancing algorithm to equalise load on the nodes (as opposed to static resource usage). The file is in the format "instance_name cpu_util mem_util disk_util net_util" where the "_util" parameters are interpreted as numbers and the instance name must match exactly the instance as read from Ganeti. In case of unknown instance names, the program will abort.

If not given, the default values are one for all metrics and thus dynamic utilisation has only one effect on the algorithm: the equalisation of the secondary instances across nodes (this is the only metric that is not tracked by another, dedicated value, and thus the disk load of instances will cause secondary instance equalisation). Note that value of one will also influence slightly the primary instance count, but that is already tracked via other metrics and thus the influence of the dynamic utilisation will be practically insignificant.

-tdatafile, --text-data=datafile
The name of the file holding node and instance information (if not collecting via RAPI or LUXI). This or one of the other backends must be selected.
-mcluster
Collect data directly from the cluster given as an argument via RAPI. If the argument doesn't contain a colon (:), then it is converted into a fully-built URL via prepending https:// and appending the default RAPI port, otherwise it's considered a fully-specified URL and is used as-is.
-L[path]
Collect data directly from the master daemon, which is to be contacted via the luxi (an internal Ganeti protocol). An optional path argument is interpreted as the path to the unix socket on which the master daemon listens; otherwise, the default path used by ganeti when installed with --localstatedir=/var is used.
-X
When using the Luxi backend, hbal can also execute the given commands. The execution method is to execute the individual jobsets (see the -C option for details) in separate stages, aborting if at any time a jobset doesn't have all jobs successful. Each step in the balancing solution will be translated into exactly one Ganeti job (having between one and three OpCodes), and all the steps in a jobset will be executed in parallel. The jobsets themselves are executed serially.
-lN, --max-length=N
Restrict the solution to this length. This can be used for example to automate the execution of the balancing.
--max-cpu cpu-ratio
The maximum virtual-to-physical cpu ratio, as a floating point number between zero and one. For example, specifying cpu-ratio as 2.5 means that, for a 4-cpu machine, a maximum of 10 virtual cpus should be allowed to be in use for primary instances. A value of one doesn't make sense though, as that means no disk space can be used on it.
--min-disk disk-ratio
The minimum amount of free disk space remaining, as a floating point number. For example, specifying disk-ratio as 0.25 means that at least one quarter of disk space should be left free on nodes.
-v, --verbose
Increase the output verbosity. Each usage of this option will increase the verbosity (currently more than 2 doesn't make sense) from the default of one.
-q, --quiet
Decrease the output verbosity. Each usage of this option will decrease the verbosity (less than zero doesn't make sense) from the default of one.
-V, --version
Just show the program version and exit.

EXIT STATUS

The exist status of the command will be zero, unless for some reason the algorithm fatally failed (e.g. wrong node or instance data).

ENVIRONMENT

If the variables HTOOLS_NODES and HTOOLS_INSTANCES are present in the environment, they will override the default names for the nodes and instances files. These will have of course no effect when the RAPI or Luxi backends are used.

BUGS

The program does not check its input data for consistency, and aborts with cryptic errors messages in this case.

The algorithm is not perfect.

The output format is not easily scriptable, and the program should feed moves directly into Ganeti (either via RAPI or via a gnt-debug input file).

EXAMPLE

Note that this example are not for the latest version (they don't have full node data).

Default output

With the default options, the program shows each individual step and the improvements it brings in cluster score:

 $ hbal
 Loaded 20 nodes, 80 instances
 Cluster is not N+1 happy, continuing but no guarantee that the cluster will end N+1 happy.
 Initial score: 0.52329131
 Trying to minimize the CV...
     1. instance14  node1:node10  => node16:node10 0.42109120 a=f r:node16 f
     2. instance54  node4:node15  => node16:node15 0.31904594 a=f r:node16 f
     3. instance4   node5:node2   => node2:node16  0.26611015 a=f r:node16
     4. instance48  node18:node20 => node2:node18  0.21361717 a=r:node2 f
     5. instance93  node19:node18 => node16:node19 0.16166425 a=r:node16 f
     6. instance89  node3:node20  => node2:node3   0.11005629 a=r:node2 f
     7. instance5   node6:node2   => node16:node6  0.05841589 a=r:node16 f
     8. instance94  node7:node20  => node20:node16 0.00658759 a=f r:node16
     9. instance44  node20:node2  => node2:node15  0.00438740 a=f r:node15
    10. instance62  node14:node18 => node14:node16 0.00390087 a=r:node16
    11. instance13  node11:node14 => node11:node16 0.00361787 a=r:node16
    12. instance19  node10:node11 => node10:node7  0.00336636 a=r:node7
    13. instance43  node12:node13 => node12:node1  0.00305681 a=r:node1
    14. instance1   node1:node2   => node1:node4   0.00263124 a=r:node4
    15. instance58  node19:node20 => node19:node17 0.00252594 a=r:node17
 Cluster score improved from 0.52329131 to 0.00252594
 

In the above output, we can see:
  - the input data (here from files) shows a cluster with 20 nodes and
    80 instances
  - the cluster is not initially N+1 compliant
  - the initial score is 0.52329131

The step list follows, showing the instance, its initial primary/secondary nodes, the new primary secondary, the cluster list, and the actions taken in this step (with 'f' denoting failover/migrate and 'r' denoting replace secondary).

Finally, the program shows the improvement in cluster score.

A more detailed output is obtained via the -C and -p options:

 $ hbal
 Loaded 20 nodes, 80 instances
 Cluster is not N+1 happy, continuing but no guarantee that the cluster will end N+1 happy.
 Initial cluster status:
 N1 Name   t_mem f_mem r_mem t_dsk f_dsk pri sec  p_fmem  p_fdsk
  * node1  32762  1280  6000  1861  1026   5   3 0.03907 0.55179
    node2  32762 31280 12000  1861  1026   0   8 0.95476 0.55179
  * node3  32762  1280  6000  1861  1026   5   3 0.03907 0.55179
  * node4  32762  1280  6000  1861  1026   5   3 0.03907 0.55179
  * node5  32762  1280  6000  1861   978   5   5 0.03907 0.52573
  * node6  32762  1280  6000  1861  1026   5   3 0.03907 0.55179
  * node7  32762  1280  6000  1861  1026   5   3 0.03907 0.55179
    node8  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node9  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
  * node10 32762  7280 12000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node11 32762  7280  6000  1861   922   4   5 0.22221 0.49577
    node12 32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node13 32762  7280  6000  1861   922   4   5 0.22221 0.49577
    node14 32762  7280  6000  1861   922   4   5 0.22221 0.49577
  * node15 32762  7280 12000  1861  1131   4   3 0.22221 0.60782
    node16 32762 31280     0  1861  1860   0   0 0.95476 1.00000
    node17 32762  7280  6000  1861  1106   5   3 0.22221 0.59479
  * node18 32762  1280  6000  1396   561   5   3 0.03907 0.40239
  * node19 32762  1280  6000  1861  1026   5   3 0.03907 0.55179
    node20 32762 13280 12000  1861   689   3   9 0.40535 0.37068
 
 Initial score: 0.52329131
 Trying to minimize the CV...
     1. instance14  node1:node10  => node16:node10 0.42109120 a=f r:node16 f
     2. instance54  node4:node15  => node16:node15 0.31904594 a=f r:node16 f
     3. instance4   node5:node2   => node2:node16  0.26611015 a=f r:node16
     4. instance48  node18:node20 => node2:node18  0.21361717 a=r:node2 f
     5. instance93  node19:node18 => node16:node19 0.16166425 a=r:node16 f
     6. instance89  node3:node20  => node2:node3   0.11005629 a=r:node2 f
     7. instance5   node6:node2   => node16:node6  0.05841589 a=r:node16 f
     8. instance94  node7:node20  => node20:node16 0.00658759 a=f r:node16
     9. instance44  node20:node2  => node2:node15  0.00438740 a=f r:node15
    10. instance62  node14:node18 => node14:node16 0.00390087 a=r:node16
    11. instance13  node11:node14 => node11:node16 0.00361787 a=r:node16
    12. instance19  node10:node11 => node10:node7  0.00336636 a=r:node7
    13. instance43  node12:node13 => node12:node1  0.00305681 a=r:node1
    14. instance1   node1:node2   => node1:node4   0.00263124 a=r:node4
    15. instance58  node19:node20 => node19:node17 0.00252594 a=r:node17
 Cluster score improved from 0.52329131 to 0.00252594
 
 Commands to run to reach the above solution:
   echo step 1
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance14
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node16 instance14
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance14
   echo step 2
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance54
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node16 instance54
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance54
   echo step 3
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance4
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node16 instance4
   echo step 4
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node2 instance48
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance48
   echo step 5
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node16 instance93
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance93
   echo step 6
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node2 instance89
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance89
   echo step 7
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node16 instance5
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance5
   echo step 8
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance94
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node16 instance94
   echo step 9
   echo gnt-instance migrate instance44
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node15 instance44
   echo step 10
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node16 instance62
   echo step 11
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node16 instance13
   echo step 12
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node7 instance19
   echo step 13
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node1 instance43
   echo step 14
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node4 instance1
   echo step 15
   echo gnt-instance replace-disks -n node17 instance58
 
 Final cluster status:
 N1 Name   t_mem f_mem r_mem t_dsk f_dsk pri sec  p_fmem  p_fdsk
    node1  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node2  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node3  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node4  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node5  32762  7280  6000  1861  1078   4   5 0.22221 0.57947
    node6  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node7  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node8  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node9  32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node10 32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node11 32762  7280  6000  1861  1022   4   4 0.22221 0.54951
    node12 32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node13 32762  7280  6000  1861  1022   4   4 0.22221 0.54951
    node14 32762  7280  6000  1861  1022   4   4 0.22221 0.54951
    node15 32762  7280  6000  1861  1031   4   4 0.22221 0.55408
    node16 32762  7280  6000  1861  1060   4   4 0.22221 0.57007
    node17 32762  7280  6000  1861  1006   5   4 0.22221 0.54105
    node18 32762  7280  6000  1396   761   4   2 0.22221 0.54570
    node19 32762  7280  6000  1861  1026   4   4 0.22221 0.55179
    node20 32762 13280  6000  1861  1089   3   5 0.40535 0.58565
 
 

Here we see, beside the step list, the initial and final cluster status, with the final one showing all nodes being N+1 compliant, and the command list to reach the final solution. In the initial listing, we see which nodes are not N+1 compliant.

The algorithm is stable as long as each step above is fully completed, e.g. in step 8, both the migrate and the replace-disks are done. Otherwise, if only the migrate is done, the input data is changed in a way that the program will output a different solution list (but hopefully will end in the same state).

SEE ALSO

hspace(1), hscan(1), hail(1), ganeti(7), gnt-instance(8), gnt-node(8)

Copyright (C) 2009 Google Inc. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.