Chaos faults for VMware

Introduction

VMware faults disrupt the resources running on a VMware cluster. Depending on the type of instance the fault targets, VMware faults are categorized into various types.

VMware CPU hog

VMware CPU hog applies stress on the CPU resources on Linux OS based VMware VM.

CPU

VMware disk loss

VMware disk loss detaches the disks that are attached to a Linux OS based VMware VM.

disk-loss

VMware DNS chaos

VMware DNS chaos causes DNS errors in the VMware VMs for a specific duration.

DNS

VMware host reboot

VMware host reboot reboots a VMware host that is attached to the Vcenter.

reboot

VMware HTTP latency

VMware HTTP latency injects HTTP response latency into the service. This is achieved by starting the proxy server and redirecting the traffic through the proxy server.

httplatency

VMware HTTP modify response

VMware HTTP modify response injects HTTP chaos by modifying the status code, body or the headers, which affects the request (or response).

http

Page 1 of 3

VMware CPU hog

Back to top

VMware CPU hog applies stress on the CPU resources on Linux OS based VMware VM. It checks the performance of the application running on the VMware VMs.

Use cases

This fault helps determine how resilient an application is when stress is applied on the CPU resources of a VMware virtual machine.

View details

VMware disk loss

Back to top

VMware disk loss detaches the disks that are attached to a Linux OS based VMware VM.

Use cases

This fault helps determine how resilient an application is to the unplanned scaling of K8s pods.

View details

VMware DNS chaos

Back to top

VMware DNS chaos causes DNS errors in the VMware VMs for a specific duration. It checks the performance of the application (or process) running on the VMware VMs.

Use cases

This fault causes DNS errors on the target VMs which results in unavailability (or distorted) network connectivity from the VM to the target hosts. This fault provides a hypothesis wherein certain services of an application could be unreachable from the VM. This fault determines how DNS errors impact the infrastructure and standalone tasks in the application.

View details

VMware host reboot

Back to top

VMware host reboot reboots a VMware host that is attached to the Vcenter. It helps determine the VMware infrastructure resilience when the host reboots. It also measures the infrastructure resilience in case of an high availability (HA) cluster.

Use cases

This fault has a high blast radius due to which all the VMs under the target host are disrupted. It measures the impact of the host reboot on the VMs and its underlying applications. It also measures the effectiveness of a HA cluster.

View details

VMware HTTP latency

Back to top

VMware HTTP latency injects HTTP response latency into the service whose port is specified using the TARGET_SERVICE_PORT environment variable. This is achieved by starting the proxy server and redirecting the traffic through the proxy server. It helps determine the application's resilience to lossy (or flaky) HTTP responses.

Use cases

This fault helps determine how resilient an application is to HTTP latency. It helps determine how the system recovers or fetches the responses when there is a delay in accessing the service.

View details

VMware HTTP modify response

Back to top

VMware HTTP modify response injects HTTP chaos by modifying the status code, body or the headers, which affects the request (or response).
Chaos is injected by starting the proxy server and redirecting the traffic through the proxy server. It tests the application's resilience to erroneous (or incorrect) HTTP response body. It modifies the headers of the requests and the responses of the service. This helps test the service's resilience towards incorrect or incomplete headers.

Use cases

This fault helps determine how resilient an application is when the status code or body or header of the request (or response) is modified. It determines the resilience of an application by how accurately the application spots incorrect HTTP response body.

View details

VMware HTTP reset peer

Back to top

VMware HTTP reset peer injects HTTP reset chaos that stops the outgoing HTTP requests by resetting the TCP connection for the requests. The service whose port is affected is specified using the TARGET_SERVICE_PORT environment variable. It tests the application's resilience to lossy (or flaky) HTTP connections.

Use cases

This fault helps determine how resilient an application is when outgoing HTTP requests are halted unexpectly. It determines how quickly and efficiently an application recovers from these unexpected halts.

View details

VMware IO stress

Back to top

VMware IO stress causes disk stress on the target VMware VMs. It aims to verify the resilience of applications that share this disk resource with the VM.

Use cases

This fault helps determine how resilient an application is to unexpected spikes in resources. It determines how well an application handles unexpected stress at a given point in time.

View details

VMware memory hog

Back to top

VMware memory hog fault consumes excessive memory resources on Linux OS based VMware VMs. It determines the performance of the application running on the VMware VMs.

Use cases

This fault helps determine how resilient an application is when excessive memory is unexpectedly consumed by resources.

View details

VMware network latency

Back to top

VMware network latency injects network packet latency from the VMware VM(s) into the application (or service). It results in flaky access to the application. It causes network degradation without the VM being marked as unhealthy (or unworthy) of traffic. It checks the performance of the application (or process) running on the VMware VM(s).

Use cases

The VM may stall (or get corrupted) while waiting endlessly for a packet. The fault limits the impact (blast radius) to the traffic that you wish to test by specifying the IP addresses.

View details

VMware network loss

Back to top

VMware network loss injects network packet loss from the VMware VM(s) into the application (or service). This results in flaky access to the application. It checks the performance of the application (or process) running on the VMware VM(s).

Use cases

The VM may stall (or get corrupted) while waiting endlessly for a packet. The fault limits the impact (blast radius) to the traffic that you wish to test by specifying the IP addresses.

View details

VMware process kill

Back to top

VMware process kill kills the target processes that are running as a part of a Linux OS based VMware VM. It helps determine the resilience of an application (or process) running on the VMware VMs.

Use cases

This fault disrupts critical processes running within the application, such as databases or message queues. These services may be running in the VMware VM, and this fault kills their underlying processes or threads. Such faults help determine how efficiently and quickly the VMware instance recovers from the unexpected disruption.

View details

VMware service stop

Back to top

VMware service stop stops the target system services running on a Linux OS based VMware VM. It determines the performance and resilience of the application (or service) running on the VMware VMs.

Use cases

This fault helps determine how resilient an application is to random halts. It determines how efficiently an application recovers and restarts the services.

View details

VMware VM power off

Back to top

VMware VM-poweroff stops (or powers off) the VMware VMs for a specific duration. After the duration, the VMs are back to original state. It checks the performance of the application running on the VMware VMs.

Use cases

This fault helps determine how resilient an application is to random power failures. It determines how efficiently an application recovers and restarts the services.

View details