The purpose of this Ansible automation is to help gain insight into the footprint and start times of MicroShift. At present, we are capturing the first start, the second start (with cached images), disk usage data from a number of points in time as well as performance data for each of the two starts.

We are using Prometheus, process-exporter and cAdvisor to capture a wide array of performance tool data.

It is necessary to have two hosts configured for running the benchmarks:

• Ansible control node used to start the automation scripts
• MicroShift server used to execute the performance tests

Run the following command on the Ansible control node to install the Ansible package.

sudo dnf install -y ansible

Follow the instructions below depending on whether the MicroShift server is set up as a clean, development or RHEL for Edge host.

If the user has a fresh RHEL host to be used for running MicroShift performance benchmarks, it is necessary to first follow the instructions in Clean Host Example Variables for editing the vars/all.yml file.

Run the playbook using the following commands, making sure that the values of the MicroShift server host and user variables are appropriate for your environment.

USHIFT_HOST=microshift-clean
USHIFT_USER=microshift

ssh-copy-id ${USHIFT_USER}@${USHIFT_HOST}
time ansible-playbook -v \
    -e ansible_host_var=${USHIFT_HOST} -e ansible_user_var=${USHIFT_USER} \
    -i inventory/inventory run-perf.yml

If the user has an existing host used as the MicroShift development environment, the default settings in the vars/all.yml file can be used.

Review the instructions in Development Host Example Variables for more information on the configuration settings.

Run the playbook using the following commands, making sure that the values of the MicroShift server host and user variables are appropriate for your environment.

USHIFT_HOST=microshift-dev
USHIFT_USER=microshift

ssh-copy-id ${USHIFT_USER}@${USHIFT_HOST}
time ansible-playbook -v \
    -e ansible_host_var=${USHIFT_HOST} -e ansible_user_var=${USHIFT_USER} \
    -e install_microshift_arg=true \
    -i inventory/inventory run-perf.yml

If the user has deployed a RHEL for Edge image built with MicroShift, the default settings in the vars/all.yml file can be used. The image must be build with -prometheus option to enable benchmark information collection as described in the Building Installer section.

Review the instructions in RHEL for Edge Host Example Variables for more information on the configuration settings.

Run the playbook using the following commands, making sure that the values of the MicroShift server host and user variables are appropriate for your environment.

USHIFT_HOST=microshift-edge
USHIFT_USER=redhat

ssh-copy-id ${USHIFT_USER}@${USHIFT_HOST}
time ansible-playbook -v \
    -e ansible_host_var=${USHIFT_HOST} -e ansible_user_var=${USHIFT_USER} \
    -e prometheus_logging_arg=false \
    -i inventory/inventory run-perf.yml

The following text files will be created on the Ansible control node running the playbook:

• The boot.txt will have the time that it took the microshift service to start and for all the pods to enter the Running state
• The disk0.txt, disk1.txt, disk2.txt files will have a snapshot of the disk usage at different stages of installation and execution.

If Prometheus was enabled, the performance metrics will be uploaded to the Ansible control node, where users can view all the captured performance data using the http:https://<ansible-server-ip>:9091 URL. These metrics can be conveniently visualized in the Grafana dashboards accessible at the http:https://<ansible-server-ip>:3000 site.

Use admin:admin credentials to log into the Grafana server.

There are a few configuration files that can be configured before execution of the playbook.

Certain Ansible playbook variables can be overriden using the --extra-args or -e command line argument.

The following variables found in vars/all.yml may need user configuration.

The inventory configuration file is located at inventory/inventory.

The MicroShift host name or IP address must be configured to match the current environment. If the user account available on the MicroShift server is not microshift, it should be changed as well.

The following Ansible command line options can be used instead of editing the inventory/inventory file.

• -e ansible_host_var=<hostname>
• -e ansible_user_var=<username>

Sample Inventory File

[microshift]
microshift-dev ansible_host=microshift-dev

[microshift:vars]
ansible_user=microshift

[logging]
localhost ansible_connection=local

The global variables file is located at vars/all.yml.

The following Ansible command line options can be used instead of editing the vars/all.yml file.

• -e install_microshift_arg=<true | false>
• -e prometheus_logging_arg=<true | false>

If the user has a fresh RHEL host to be used for running MicroShift performance benchmarks, the scripts can manage the initial host setup and configuration in addition to the performance capture.

As we can read from the following configuration, we have selected to manage_subscription and this requires the subsequent rhel_* vars to be set. The other initial configuration steps are toggled with the setup_microshift_host variable, which we have set to true for this configuration.

On a clean system, the playbook will also copy the user-provided pull-secret from roles/install-microshift/files/pull-secret.txt to the correct location on the host.

Sample vars/all.yml File

manage_subscription: true
rhel_username: <subscription manager username>
rhel_password: <subscription manager password>
rhel_pool_id: <subscription manager pool-id>
manage_repos: true

setup_microshift_host: true
prometheus_logging: true
install_microshift: true
build_etcd_binary: false

If the user has an existing host used as the MicroShift development environment, the scripts can be run without the initial configuration steps.

Such host can be created using the instructions from the MicroShift Development Environment document.

The manage_subscription, manage_repos and setup_microshift_host variables have been set to false.

Sample vars/all.yml File

manage_subscription: false
rhel_username:
rhel_password:
rhel_pool_id:
manage_repos: false

setup_microshift_host: false
prometheus_logging: true
install_microshift: true
build_etcd_binary: false

If the user has deployed a RHEL for Edge image built with MicroShift, the scripts can be run with a few more variables disabled as the host is fully configured out of the box.

Such host can be created using the instructions from the Install MicroShift on RHEL for Edge document.

The manage_subscription, manage_repos, setup_microshift_host, prometheus_logging and install_microshift variables have been set to false.

Sample vars/all.yml File

manage_subscription: false
rhel_username:
rhel_password:
rhel_pool_id:
manage_repos: false

setup_microshift_host: false
prometheus_logging: false
install_microshift: false
build_etcd_binary: false