[Rdo-list] New deployment model for HA compute nodes - now with automated recovery of VMs

Fri Apr 10 23:31:31 UTC 2015

Hi Andrew,

I've checked your git, great work, but I'm using native toois with
keepalived approach, using mmonit utility to monitor the infrastructure
without pacemaker/corosync.

I'm testing this approach to evacuate and disable a compute node, if
something fails. What approach do you consider best, having in mind that a
external monitoring tool like mmonit is not "cluster aware" and doesn't do
things like fencing the dead node like pacemaker does?

Thank you.

On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 3:12 AM, Andrew Beekhof <abeekhof at redhat.com> wrote:

> Previously in order monitor the healthiness of compute nodes and the
> services running on them, we had to create single node clusters due to
> corosync's scaling limits.
> We can now announce a new deployment model that allows Pacemaker to
> continue this role, but presents a single coherent view of the entire
> deployment while allowing us to scale beyond corosync's limits.
>
> Having this single administrative domain then allows us to do clever
> things like automated recovery of VMs running on a failed or failing
> compute node.
>
> The main difference with the previous deployment mode is that services on
> the compute nodes are now managed and driven by the Pacemaker cluster on
> the control plane.
> The compute nodes do not become full members of the cluster and they no
> longer require the full cluster stack, instead they run pacemaker_remoted
> which acts as a conduit.
>
> Implementation Details:
>
> - Pacemaker monitors the connection to pacemaker_remoted to verify that
> the node is reachable or not.
>   Failure to talk to a node triggers recovery action.
>
> - Pacemaker uses pacemaker_remoted to start compute node services in the
> same sequence as before (neutron-ovs-agent -> ceilometer-compute ->
> nova-compute).
>
> - If a service fails to start, any services that depend on the FAILED
> service will not be started.
>   This avoids the issue of adding a broken node (back) to the pool.
>
> - If a service fails to stop, the node where the service is running will
> be fenced.
>   This is necessary to guarantee data integrity and a core HA concept (for
> the purposes of this particular discussion, please take this as a given).
>
> - If a service's health check fails, the resource (and anything that
> depends on it) will be stopped and then restarted.
>   Remember that failure to stop will trigger a fencing action.
>
> - A successful restart of all the services can only potentially affect
> network connectivity of the instances for a short period of time.
>
> With these capabilities in place, we can exploit Pacemaker's node
> monitoring and fencing capabilities to drive nova host-evacuate for the
> failed compute nodes and recover the VMs elsewhere.
> When a compute node fails, Pacemaker will:
>
> 1. Execute 'nova service-disable'
> 2. fence (power off) the failed compute node
> 3. fence_compute off (waiting for nova to detect the compute node is gone)
> 4. fence_compute on (a no-op unless the host happens to be up already)
> 5. Execute 'nova service-enable' when the compute node returns
>
> Technically steps 1 and 5 are optional and they are aimed to improve user
> experience by immediately excluding a failed host from nova scheduling.
> The only benefit is a faster scheduling of VMs that happens during a
> failure (nova does not have to recognize a host is down, timeout and
> subsequently schedule the VM on another host).
>
> Step 2 will make sure the host is completely powered off and nothing is
> running on the host.
> Optionally, you can have the failed host reboot which would potentially
> allow it to re-enter the pool.
>
> We have an implementation for Step 3 but the ideal solution depends on
> extensions to the nova API.
> Currently fence_compute loops, waiting for nova to recognise that the
> failed host is down, before we make a host-evacuate call which triggers
> nova to restart the VMs on another host.
> The discussed nova API extensions will speed up recovery times by allowing
> fence_compute to proactively push that information into nova instead.
>
>
> To take advantage of the VM recovery features:
>
> - VMs need to be running off a cinder volume or using shared ephemeral
> storage (like RBD or NFS)
> - If VM is not running using shared storage, recovery of the instance on a
> new compute node would need to revert to a previously stored snapshot/image
> in Glance (potentially losing state, but in some cases that may not matter)
> - RHEL7.1+ required for infrastructure nodes (controllers and compute).
> Instance guests can run anything.
> - Compute nodes need to have a working fencing mechanism (IPMI, hardware
> watchdog, etc)
>
>
> Detailed instructions for deploying this new model are of course available
> on Github:
>
>
> https://github.com/beekhof/osp-ha-deploy/blob/master/ha-openstack.md#compute-node-implementation
>
> It has been successfully deployed in our labs, but we'd really like to
> hear how it works for you in the field.
> Please contact me if you encounter any issues.
>
> -- Andrew
>
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