Hi Zane,

At this stage our implementation (as mentioned in 
wiki<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Heat/ConvergenceDesign>) achieves your 
design goals.


1.       In case of a parallel update, our implementation adjusts graph 
according to new template and waits for dispatched resource tasks to complete.

2.       Reason for basing our PoC on Heat code:

a.       To solve contention processing parent resource by all dependent 
resources in parallel.

b.      To avoid porting issue from PoC to HeatBase. (just to be aware of 
potential issues asap)

3.       Resource timeout would be helpful, but I guess its resource specific 
and has to come from template and default values from plugins.

4.       We see resource notification aggregation and processing next level of 
resources without contention and with minimal DB usage as the problem area. We 
are working on the following approaches in parallel.

a.       Use a Queue per stack to serialize notification.

b.      Get parent ProcessLog (ResourceID, EngineID) and initiate convergence 
upon first child notification. Subsequent children who fail to get parent 
resource lock will directly send message to waiting parent task 
(topic=stack_id.parent_resource_id)
Based on performance/feedback we can select either or a mashed version.

Advantages:

1.       Failed Resource tasks can be re-initiated after ProcessLog table 
lookup.

2.       One worker == one resource.

3.       Supports concurrent updates

4.       Delete == update with empty stack

5.       Rollback == update to previous know good/completed stack.

Disadvantages:

1.       Still holds stackLock (WIP to remove with ProcessLog)

Completely understand your concern on reviewing our code, since commits are 
numerous and there is change of course at places.  Our start commit is 
[c1b3eb22f7ab6ea60b095f88982247dd249139bf] though this might not help ☺

Your Thoughts.

Happy Thanksgiving.
Vishnu.

From: Angus Salkeld [mailto:asalk...@mirantis.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2014 9:46 AM
To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [Heat] Convergence proof-of-concept showdown

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 12:20 PM, Zane Bitter 
<zbit...@redhat.com<mailto:zbit...@redhat.com>> wrote:
A bunch of us have spent the last few weeks working independently on proof of 
concept designs for the convergence architecture. I think those efforts have 
now reached a sufficient level of maturity that we should start working 
together on synthesising them into a plan that everyone can forge ahead with. 
As a starting point I'm going to summarise my take on the three efforts; 
hopefully the authors of the other two will weigh in to give us their 
perspective.


Zane's Proposal
===============

https://github.com/zaneb/heat-convergence-prototype/tree/distributed-graph

I implemented this as a simulator of the algorithm rather than using the Heat 
codebase itself in order to be able to iterate rapidly on the design, and 
indeed I have changed my mind many, many times in the process of implementing 
it. Its notable departure from a realistic simulation is that it runs only one 
operation at a time - essentially giving up the ability to detect race 
conditions in exchange for a completely deterministic test framework. You just 
have to imagine where the locks need to be. Incidentally, the test framework is 
designed so that it can easily be ported to the actual Heat code base as 
functional tests so that the same scenarios could be used without modification, 
allowing us to have confidence that the eventual implementation is a faithful 
replication of the simulation (which can be rapidly experimented on, adjusted 
and tested when we inevitably run into implementation issues).

This is a complete implementation of Phase 1 (i.e. using existing resource 
plugins), including update-during-update, resource clean-up, replace on update 
and rollback; with tests.

Some of the design goals which were successfully incorporated:
- Minimise changes to Heat (it's essentially a distributed version of the 
existing algorithm), and in particular to the database
- Work with the existing plugin API
- Limit total DB access for Resource/Stack to O(n) in the number of resources
- Limit overall DB access to O(m) in the number of edges
- Limit lock contention to only those operations actually contending (i.e. no 
global locks)
- Each worker task deals with only one resource
- Only read resource attributes once


Open questions:
- What do we do when we encounter a resource that is in progress from a 
previous update while doing a subsequent update? Obviously we don't want to 
interrupt it, as it will likely be left in an unknown state. Making a 
replacement is one obvious answer, but in many cases there could be serious 
down-sides to that. How long should we wait before trying it? What if it's 
still in progress because the engine processing the resource already died?

Also, how do we implement resource level timeouts in general?


Michał's Proposal
=================

https://github.com/inc0/heat-convergence-prototype/tree/iterative

Note that a version modified by me to use the same test scenario format (but 
not the same scenarios) is here:

https://github.com/zaneb/heat-convergence-prototype/tree/iterative-adapted

This is based on my simulation framework after a fashion, but with everything 
implemented synchronously and a lot of handwaving about how the actual 
implementation could be distributed. The central premise is that at each step 
of the algorithm, the entire graph is examined for tasks that can be performed 
next, and those are then started. Once all are complete (it's synchronous, 
remember), the next step is run. Keen observers will be asking how we know when 
it is time to run the next step in a distributed version of this algorithm, 
where it will be run and what to do about resources that are in an intermediate 
state at that time. All of these questions remain unanswered.

Yes, I was struggling to figure out how it could manage an IN_PROGRESS state as 
it's stateless. So you end up treading on the other action's toes.
Assuming we use the resource's state (IN_PROGRESS) you could get around that. 
Then you kick off a converge when ever an action completes (if there is nothing 
new to be
done then do nothing).


A non-exhaustive list of concerns I have:
- Replace on update is not implemented yet
- AFAIK rollback is not implemented yet
- The simulation doesn't actually implement the proposed architecture
- This approach is punishingly heavy on the database - O(n^2) or worse

Yes, re-reading the state of all resources when ever run a new converge is 
worrying, but I think Michal had some ideas to minimize this.

- A lot of phase 2 is mixed in with phase 1 here, making it difficult to 
evaluate which changes need to be made first and whether this approach works 
with existing plugins
- The code is not really based on how Heat works at the moment, so there would 
be either a major redesign required or lots of radical changes in Heat or both

I think there's a fair chance that given another 3-4 weeks to work on this, all 
of these issues and others could probably be resolved. The question for me at 
this point is not so much "if" but "why".

Michał believes that this approach will make Phase 2 easier to implement, which 
is a valid reason to consider it. However, I'm not aware of any particular 
issues that my approach would cause in implementing phase 2 (note that I have 
barely looked into it at all though). In fact, I very much want Phase 2 to be 
entirely encapsulated by the Resource class, so that the plugin type (legacy 
vs. convergence-enabled) is transparent to the rest of the system. Only in this 
way can we be sure that we'll be able to maintain support for legacy plugins. 
So a phase 1 that mixes in aspects of phase 2 is actually a bad thing in my 
view.

I really appreciate the effort that has gone into this already, but in the 
absence of specific problems with building phase 2 on top of another approach 
that are solved by this one, I'm ready to call this a distraction.

In it's defence, I like the simplicity of it. The concepts and code are easy to 
understand - tho' part of this is doesn't implement all the stuff on your list 
yet.



Anant & Friends' Proposal
=========================

First off, I have found this very difficult to review properly since the code 
is not separate from the huge mass of Heat code and nor is the commit history 
in the form that patch submissions would take (but rather includes backtracking 
and iteration on the design). As a result, most of the information here has 
been gleaned from discussions about the code rather than direct review. I have 
repeatedly suggested that this proof of concept work should be done using the 
simulator framework instead, unfortunately so far to no avail.

The last we heard on the mailing list about this, resource clean-up had not yet 
been implemented. That was a major concern because that is the more difficult 
half of the algorithm. Since then there have been a lot more commits, but it's 
not yet clear whether resource clean-up, update-during-update, 
replace-on-update and rollback have been implemented, though it is clear that 
at least some progress has been made on most or all of them. Perhaps someone 
can give us an update.

https://github.com/anantpatil/heat-convergence-poc


AIUI this code also mixes phase 2 with phase 1, which is a concern. For me the 
highest priority for phase 1 is to be sure that it works with existing plugins. 
Not only because we need to continue to support them, but because converting 
all of our existing 'integration-y' unit tests to functional tests that operate 
in a distributed system is virtually impossible in the time frame we have 
available. So the existing test code needs to stick around, and the existing 
stack create/update/delete mechanisms need to remain in place until such time 
as we have equivalent functional test coverage to begin eliminating existing 
unit tests. (We'll also, of course, need to have unit tests for the individual 
elements of the new distributed workflow, functional tests to confirm that the 
distributed workflow works in principle as a whole - the scenarios from the 
simulator can help with _part_ of this - and, not least, an algorithm that is 
as similar as possible to the current one so that our existing tests remain at 
least somewhat representative and don't require too many major changes 
themselves.)

Speaking of tests, I gathered that this branch included tests, but I don't know 
to what extent there are automated end-to-end functional tests of the algorithm?

From what I can gather, the approach seems broadly similar to the one I 
eventually settled on also. The major difference appears to be in how we merge 
two or more streams of execution (i.e. when one resource depends on two or more 
others). In my approach, the dependencies are stored in the resources and each 
joining of streams creates a database row to track it, which is easily locked 
with contention on the lock extending only to those resources which are direct 
dependencies of the one waiting. In this approach, both the dependencies and 
the progress through the graph are stored in a database table, necessitating 
(a) reading of the entire table (as it relates to the current stack) on every 
resource operation, and (b) locking of the entire table (which is hard) when 
marking a resource operation complete.

I chatted to Anant about this today and he mentioned that they had solved the 
locking problem by dispatching updates to a queue that is read by a single 
engine per stack.

My approach also has the neat side-effects of pushing the data required to 
resolve get_resource and get_att (without having to reload the resources again 
and query them) as well as to update dependencies (e.g. because of a 
replacement or deletion) along with the flow of triggers. I don't know if 
anything similar is at work here.

It's entirely possible that the best design might combine elements of both 
approaches.

The same open questions I detailed under my proposal also apply to this one, if 
I understand correctly.


I'm certain that I won't have represented everyone's work fairly here, so I 
encourage folks to dive in and correct any errors about theirs and ask any 
questions you might have about mine. (In case you have been living under a 
rock, note that I'll be out of the office for the rest of the week due to 
Thanksgiving so don't expect immediate replies.)

I also think this would be a great time for the wider Heat community to dive in 
and start asking questions and suggesting ideas. We need to, ahem, converge on 
a shared understanding of the design so we can all get to work delivering it 
for Kilo.

Agree, we need to get moving on this.
-Angus


cheers,
Zane.

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