Server certification for the cloud
Every cloud has an Aubergine lining...
Cloud computing is becoming increasingly pervasive and important in the world today. Cloud computing is used in datacenters all over for resource utilization, hosting, storage, providing media content, on-demand computing power and many other applications. Competition is growing at a rapid pace in this new infrastructure race with public cloud space available from Google, Amazon, Canonical, Apple and others. For this and other reasons, we need to be sure that Ubuntu functions well in the cloud as both a host and guest OS.
From a hardware certification point of view, we need to ensure that Ubuntu can function properly as a Virtual Machine on popular virtualization products: VMWare, XenServer and KVM. This means that we need to come up with a plan for extending infrastructure, tools and processes to allow for dedicated host machines for each of the respective virtualization products. However, we also need to keep this framed within the boundaries of Hardware Certification testing, not Software QA testing which is currently handled very well by the Ubuntu Server team and the Platform QA Team.
What we can do this cycle:
1: beef up the server test suite and make sure it's something we can hand to groups like Citrix and VMWare so they can test Ubuntu on their platforms.
2: test said suite and make sure it's solid, and doesn't rely on our infrastructure (e.g. can be run in their labs without ever talking to C3 if necessary)
3: Implement KVM testing (perhaps using KVM Autotest as Soren suggests) to ensure we are testing virtualization on Ubuntu Hosts to some degree
4: Certify the servers in our DCs and on-site at OEMs for 12.04
Blueprint information
- Status:
- Not started
- Approver:
- Ara Pulido
- Priority:
- Medium
- Drafter:
- Jeff Lane
- Direction:
- Needs approval
- Assignee:
- None
- Definition:
- Approved
- Series goal:
- None
- Implementation:
-
Not started
- Milestone target:
- None
- Started by
- Completed by
Whiteboard
Definition of Done
* We have a better server infrastructure improved to do better testing, including additional network port availability
* We have dedicated hardware in DC as a VMWare host for certifying VMs
* We have dedicated hardware in DC as a XenCenter host for certifying VMs
* We have dedicated hardware in DC as a KVM host for certifying VMs (use current LTS?)
* The server Test Suite has been improved with new tests specific for testing server capabilities
* Ubuntu 12.04 LTS has been certified as guests for VMWare and XenServer
* There is a reliable and automated process to test kernel SRUs on Ubuntu on VMWare and XenServer
BONUS POINTS:
* Automated stress testing suite for servers w/ real-world load testing (Apache, LAMP, etc)
Notes from the session: placed here in case etherpad goes away soon.
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Notes on Server Cert for the cloud
Be able to certify virtualization platforms
VMWare
Xen Server
Ubuntu Server (KVM)
LXC (probably not)
General enhancements to the server certification suite:
Real world load tests, apache benchmarks, mysql benchmarks
Stress testing already pretty good
Configurations (soren)
Make sure we use both Intel and AMD hardware for the bare metal
* Priorities
Number of virtual CPUs possible
VLANs (2nd)
NIC bonding (3rd)
Bridging (1st)
Failover
Network I/O stress(*)
Disk I/O stress(*)
Memory/CPU stress (*)
Overcommit (CPU, Network, Disk, Memory)
Migration/
Check about what's supported in different hypervisors
ACTION: Look at mahmoh's tests
Test resources (from autotest suites): http://
https:/
Avoid using VM specific test suites where possible
Having dedicated hardware for this may enable us to do continuous testing throughout the development cycle
How many VMs (2 per hyperthread)? Different configurations - paravirt vs full virt, bridged network etc
Reasonable minimum limits on the host server for certification (CPU + extensions, RAM)
Industry standard? Same as Ubuntu server?
Do we know the minimum requirements of Ubuntu as KVM host?
ACTION Check with the server team (daviey)
