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Lifecycle and Troubleshooting

Pull cord in case of emergency

When a new Service-Under-Test (SUT) workload is applied to the cluster, the operator manages a complex automated workflow. These workflow events happen independently of the Speedscale cloud service. If no report is appearing in Speedscale cloud, the problem may be in the test cluster.

How to check if your replay is running​

Here are a few quick things that will help you understand if your replay is running:

  1. Check the operator logs, you should this message traffic replay initiated
  2. Check for replay objects in the namespace kubectl get replay -n NAMESPACE
  3. Check the reports interface to see if a new report has been generated
  4. Check your Service Under Test (SUT)'s namespace to see if a Speedscale generator or responder pod have been created

If you don't see one or all of these items, double check your operator installation and your annotations. Reminder: make sure you are running the latest operator.

As a reminder, you can view the operator logs using this kubectl command:

kubectl -n speedscale logs deployment/speedscale-operator

Now, let's walk through more detail with the sequence of events and show some troubleshooting steps to help you determine if everything is working properly in your cluster.

1. Operator receives mutating admission webhook​

The following log message will indicate that the operator is aware of the new workload. 

{"L":"INFO","T":"...","M":"Processing mutate","kind":"apps/v1, Kind=Deployment","name":"speedy-service"}

If a log message like this is not present, it probably means that the MutatingAdmissionWebhook is misconfigured in your cluster and the operator is not being notified of new SUT workloads. The yaml for the MutatingAdmissionWebhook is created when the operator is installed.

2. Operator modifies SUT workload​

If the speedscale annotations are present, then the operator will modify the workload accordingly. To begin an isolation test, the following annotations are required:

replay.speedscale.com/snapshot-id: <snapshot ID>
replay.speedscale.com/testconfig-id: <test config ID>

The operator will pull the snapshot/scenario from Speedscale Cloud before proceeding. If the cloud service is unavailable, the operator will not allow the SUT workload to proceed. If the snapshot is not found, the operator will print an error message similar to this:

{"L":"ERROR","T":"...","M":"failed to retrieve snapshot", ... }

Assuming the snapshot is available, the SUT workload will proceed.

The following operator log message indicates that the operator is making changes before allowing the SUT workload to proceed:

{"L":"INFO","T":"...","M":"MUTATE", ...}

The exact format and content of this message will vary. However, you will be able to see a variety of patches representing the modifications being made. They should match your annotations.

2a. (optional) Operator adds responder​

With annotation replay.speedscale.com/mode is set to full-replay or responder-only, the operator will:

  • Add an init container to the SUT pod. This init container will stop the pod from continuing until the Speedscale responder responds to a readiness probe.
  • Add HostAlias entries to the SUT container to route traffic to the responder

2b. (optional) Operator adds sidecar​

With annotation sidecar.speedscale.com/inject set to "true", the operator will:

  • Add the init container sidecar to the SUT workoad
  • Add the proxy sidecar to the SUT workload

2c. (optional) Operator adds TLS configuration​

With the annotation sidecar.speedscale.com/tls-out set to "true", the operator will:

  • volume mount the user-provided outbound certificates to the SUT workload
  • modify the TLS environment variables or trust store in the SUT workload

In order to add the TLS inbound configuration, supply the name of your TLS secret in the sidecar.speedscale.com/tls-secret annotation.

At this point, the operator will return the patch list to the Kubernetes API and the workload will continue.

3. Operator prepares the test environment​

Now that the SUT workload has been mutated, the operator starts the process of standing up the test environment. The following steps will occur asynchronously. In other words, Kubernetes will be allowed to continue SUT workload while Speedscale continues working in the background.

A TrafficReplay for the workload will be generated to track the status of your replay. The name of the specific TrafficReplay can be found by retrieving the replay.speedscale.com/env-id annotation from the SUT.

kubectl get deploy <NAME> -o jsonpath='{.metadata.annotations.replay\.speedscale\.com/env-id}'
kubectl get statefulsets <NAME> -o jsonpath='{.metadata.annotations.replay\.speedscale\.com/env-id}'
kubectl get daemonsets <NAME> -o jsonpath='{.metadata.annotations.replay\.speedscale\.com/env-id}'
kubectl get jobs <NAME> -o jsonpath='{.metadata.annotations.replay\.speedscale\.com/env-id}'
tip

Are your replays timing out because the Service Under Test is not ready in time? You can increase the amount of time the Speedscale Operator will wait by setting TEST_PREP_TIMEOUT in the operator Config Map. If you have access to your cluster you can run this kubectl command kubectl -n speedscale patch configmap speedscale-operator --type=merge -p '{"data":{"TEST_PREP_TIMEOUT":"25m"}}' with your new time.

3a. Operator adds Speedscale credentials to test namespace​

3b. (optional) Operator starts telemetry collector​

If the collector feature flag is set, the container logs are collected using a pod called collector. If logs are not appearing in your report, can check for errors in the collector container logs.

3c. (optional) Operator waits for responder to start (replay.speedscale.com/mode: full)​

When the responder is present, an init container will stop the SUT workload from starting until the Speedscale responder responds to a readiness probe. The responder failing to start will cause the SUT startup to appear frozen. Check the logs of the init container to see if it can reach the responder:

<insert kubectl logs command>

Also, make sure the responder services are present. If they are not, the SUT will not be able to reach the responder. They will be named responder-http, responder-https, etc

The operator will wait for these steps to complete. The log message indicating it is in a wait state begins with WAIT SUT. When complete, you will see a log starting with SUT ready, updating config map.

4. Operator begins test​

Once the environment is prepared, the operator will run a generator job to start the test. If the generator annotation has been manually set to false (which is rare) then the operator will simply wait for a while before cleaning up the environment. The operator logs will tell you this is happening.

One additional edge case occurs if there are no inbound transactions in the snapshot. This will prevent the generator from running and you will see this log message:

{"L":"ERROR","T":"...","M":"no inbound transactions in this scenario, no test report will be generated", ... }

3b. (optional) Operator deploys generator​

With annotation replay.speedscale.com/mode is set to full-replay or generator-only, the generator will start and you will see this log message:

{"L":"INFO","T":"...","M":"START generator"

5. Operator cleans up environment​

By default, the operator will clean up all Speedscale components from the namespace. The operator log will contain the following message is this is taking place:

{"L":"INFO","T":"...","M":"START namespace cleanup",...}

If you want to collect debug logs, you can set the following annotation to prevent the operator from cleaning up:

replay.speedscale.com/cleanup: "none"

You may also clean up the Speedscale replay inventory, but leave the workload running:

replay.speedscale.com/cleanup: "inventory"

Viewing Results

Summaries​

To see a summary of whether the replay was successful or failed, you can inspect the Reason and Message fields.

RESULT=$(kubectl get replay <REPLAY-NAME> -o jsonpath='{.status.conditions[?(@.type=="Ready")].reason}')
MESSAGE=$(kubectl get replay <REPLAY-NAME> -o jsonpath='{.status.conditions[?(@.type=="Ready")].message}'

Possible values for RESULT are:

  • TestFailed indicates that the test is failed for some reason (failed to initialize, failed to start, timed out, goals are not met etc.)
  • TestSucceeded indicates that the replay has finished, analyzed and all the goals are met.

MESSAGE can provide more information about why the replay has failed.

Detailed reports​

To view detailed reports of your test, you can query the TrafficReplay for your report ID and report URL.

kubectl get replay <REPLAY-NAME> -o jsonpath='{.status.reportID}'
kubectl get replay <REPLAY-NAME> -o jsonpath='{.status.reportURL}'

You can navigate to the report URL in your browser. To see JSON representation of your report, you can fetch the report by ID.

speedctl get report <report ID>