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VMware host reboot

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.

VMware Host Reboot

Use cases​

  • VMware host reboot 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.
note
  • Kubernetes > 1.16 is required to execute this fault.
  • Execution plane should be connected to vCenter and host vCenter on port 443.
  • The VM should be in a healthy state before and after injecting chaos.
  • VMware tool should be installed on the target VM with remote execution enabled.
  • Appropriate vCenter permissions should be provided to access the hosts and the VMs.
  • Kubernetes secret has to be created that has the Vcenter credentials in the CHAOS_NAMESPACE. VM credentials can be passed as secrets or as a ChaosEngine environment variable. Below is a sample secret file:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: vcenter-secret
  namespace: litmus
type: Opaque
stringData:
    VCENTERSERVER: XXXXXXXXXXX
    VCENTERUSER: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
    VCENTERPASS: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Fault tunables​

Mandatory fields

Variables Description Notes
HOST_NAME Name of the target host For example, host-1. For more information, go to host name.
HOST_DATACENTER Name of the data center to which the host belongs. For example, datacenter-1. For more information, go to host datacenter.
HIGH_AVAILABILITY_CLUSTER Specify whether the host is a part of the high availability cluster. Defaults to disable. Supports enable as well. For more information, go to high availablity cluster.

Optional fields

Variables Description Notes
RAMP_TIME Period to wait before and after injecting chaos (in seconds). For example, 30s. For more information, go to ramp time.

Host reboot​

It reboots a vCenter host.

Use the following example to tune it:

# vCenter host reboot
apiVersion: litmuschaos.io/v1alpha1
kind: ChaosEngine
metadata:
  name: engine-nginx
spec:
  engineState: "active"
  annotationCheck: "false"
  chaosServiceAccount: litmus-admin
  experiments:
    - name: VMware-host-reboot
      spec:
        components:
          env:
            # Name of the host
            - name: HOST_NAME
              value: 'host-1'
            # Host datacenter
            - name: HOST_DATACENTER
              value: 'datacenter-1'

HA cluster​

It specifies whether to reboot a vCenter host which is a part of a high availability cluster. Tune it by using the HIGH_AVAILABILITY_CLUSTER environment variable.

Use the following example to tune it:

# vCenter HA cluster host reboot
apiVersion: litmuschaos.io/v1alpha1
kind: ChaosEngine
metadata:
  name: engine-nginx
spec:
  engineState: "active"
  annotationCheck: "false"
  chaosServiceAccount: litmus-admin
  experiments:
    - name: VMware-host-reboot
      spec:
        components:
          env:
            # Name of the host
            - name: HOST_NAME
              value: 'host-1'
            # Host datacenter
            - name: HOST_DATACENTER
              value: 'datacenter-1'
            # Is host part of HA cluster
            - name: HIGH_AVAILABILITY_CLUSTER
              value: 'enable'