Scalability is one key feature that drives OpenStack adoption around the globe. With the dispatch of OpenStack's 14th release dubbed Newton, OpenStack makers affirm that it now incorporates enhanced scaling abilities. The Operations team at the OpenStack Innovation Center decided to demonstrate that OpenStack is effortlessly scalable to 500 nodes in a single region. To complete this task, we decided to work on a tool that allows them to target a set number of servers and "partition" them; if you have 10 physical servers, split those into 100 virtual servers, and use them as compute nodes within an OpenStack deployment. In this session we will examine the simulator tool, deep dive into its internals, and run through a demo. You will learn how you might utilize it to test the scaling of various OpenStack services and decrease the cost of creating labs and staging environments within your company.

1. Maximizing Hardware
Kevin Carter
Ala Raddaoui
Shannon Mitchell
Server Simulator: Faking cloud, or hyper-converging
Tests?

2. /usr/bin/whoami
I love being challenged to create, implement, and
productize the impossible.
● Developer at the Rackspace Private Cloud
● Open source activist
● Cloud operations junkie
● Python aficionado
● Recovering rubyist
● Believer in the power of Ansible
● Beer lover (generally IPAs)
● Soccer fanatic
/usr/bin/whoami
Kevin Carter

3. /usr/bin/finger
Competitive and like to do what others can’t!
● Cloud Engineer at Intel Corporation
● Smart Solutions admirer
● Big Data suitor
● Connected and open source are my values
● Adrenaline follower
● Chess master
Ala Raddaoui

4. /usr/bin/id
Enjoys privacy and avoids public speaking
● Engineer at the Rackspace Private Cloud
● Command line jockey
● Introvert
Shannon Mitchell

5. A Show of Hands

6. Level of pain
Where are you with OpenStack?
It worked in
Devstack
No Pain Little Pain Known PainActual Pain
It worked in an
AIO
It worked in
multiple hosts
It worked in a
couple cabinets
It worked in
many cabinets

7. Level of pain
Most are Here
Actual Pain
It worked in
multiple hosts
It worked in a
couple cabinets

8. The Mission
Deploy large(ish) environments with minimal
hardware commitments.

9. What We’re Doing
- Test Networking on a distributed deployment
- Test Orchestration at >1 node
- Test Parallel operations on >1 node
- Test Environment at >1 node.

10. Why Simulating Servers?
- Development and Scale Testing
- Operational lab deployments
- Network stress testing
- Targeted developer workflows

11. What this is NOT!
- New way of doing production deployments
- OpenStack Deployment Project

12. Core Technologies Used
- Ubuntu 14/16.04
- Cobbler
- Libvirt
- Ansible

13. Multi-Node-AIO Architecture

14. So where do we go from here?!

15. We multi-node, our multi-node-aio.

16. Enter The Simulator
What the Simulator provided us
• Test System Management of >=500 nodes
• Test Technologies using >=500 nodes
• Test OpenStack on >=500 nodes
• Test Proper failure scenarios with >=500 nodes

17. Simulator Architecture Multi-Node

18. Large Scale Test
- Tested scaling of OpenStack to 500 node in one region
- Built using the Simulator and OpenStack-Ansible
- Used 100 Servers powered by Ironic
Multi-Multi-Node-AIM

19. Large Scale Test (Simulator Findings)
Image: geocaching.com

20. Large Scale Test (OSA Scale Issues)
MariaDB with Galera
RabbitMQ
Nova
Config Management
The Usual Suspects

21. Live Demo
OpenStack Pike, grant me the Stability
to recover from the brokenness I’m
about to inflict upon myself, even
though I’ve known better all along.
Image: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1135283-doom

22. Fake Clouds, or Hyper-Converged Testing?
Image: tumbler.com

23. Kevin Carter (IRC: cloudnull)
Ala Raddaoui (IRC: raddaoui)
Shannon Mitchell (IRC: shananigans)
Thank You