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Commit 53c24840 authored by Iustin Pop's avatar Iustin Pop
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Update hbal man page to note that we use stddev

We actually use stddev and not the coefficient of variance (as wrongly
noted before), so we update the documentation appropriately.

We also note that the dynamic load values must be pre-normalized, since
we don't do such a normalization in the code.
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......@@ -120,27 +120,32 @@ components:
.RS 4
.TP 3
\(em
coefficient of variance of the percent of free memory
standard deviation of the percent of free memory
.TP
\(em
coefficient of variance of the percent of reserved memory
standard deviation of the percent of reserved memory
.TP
\(em
coefficient of variance of the percent of free disk
standard deviation of the percent of free disk
.TP
\(em
percentage of nodes failing N+1 check
count of nodes failing N+1 check
.TP
\(em
percentage of instances living (either as primary or secondary) on
count of instances living (either as primary or secondary) on
offline nodes
.TP
\(em
coefficent of variance of the ratio of virtual-to-physical cpus (for
primary instaces of the node)
count of instances living (as primary) on offline nodes; this differs
from the above metric by helping failover of such instances in 2-node
clusters
.TP
\(em
coefficients of variance of the dynamic load on the nodes, for cpus,
standard deviation of the ratio of virtual-to-physical cpus (for
primary instances of the node)
.TP
\(em
standard deviation of the dynamic load on the nodes, for cpus,
memory, disk and network
.RE
......@@ -151,25 +156,18 @@ instances, and that no node keeps too much memory reserved for
N+1. And finally, the N+1 percentage helps guide the algorithm towards
eliminating N+1 failures, if possible.
Except for the N+1 failures and offline instances percentage, we use
the coefficient of variance since this brings the values into the same
unit so to speak, and with a restrict domain of values (between zero
and one). The percentage of N+1 failures, while also in this numeric
range, doesn't actually has the same meaning, but it has shown to work
well.
The other alternative, using for N+1 checks the coefficient of
variance of (N+1 fail=1, N+1 pass=0) across nodes could hint the
algorithm to make more N+1 failures if most nodes are N+1 fail
already. Since this (making N+1 failures) is not allowed by other
rules of the algorithm, so the N+1 checks would simply not work
anymore in this case.
The offline instances percentage (meaning the percentage of instances
living on offline nodes) will cause the algorithm to actively move
instances away from offline nodes. This, coupled with the restriction
on placement given by offline nodes, will cause evacuation of such
nodes.
Except for the N+1 failures and offline instances counts, we use the
standard deviation since when used with values within a fixed range
(we use percents expressed as values between zero and one) it gives
consistent results across all metrics (there are some small issues
related to different means, but it works generally well). The 'count'
type values will have higher score and thus will matter more for
balancing; thus these are better for hard constraints (like evacuating
nodes and fixing N+1 failures). For example, the offline instances
count (i.e. the number of instances living on offline nodes) will
cause the algorithm to actively move instances away from offline
nodes. This, coupled with the restriction on placement given by
offline nodes, will cause evacuation of such nodes.
The dynamic load values need to be read from an external file (Ganeti
doesn't supply them), and are computed for each node as: sum of
......@@ -182,10 +180,11 @@ list" for instance over a day and by computing the delta of the cpu
values, and feed that via the \fI-U\fR option for all instances (and
keep the other metrics as one). For the algorithm to work, all that is
needed is that the values are consistent for a metric across all
instances (e.g. all instances use cpu% to report cpu usage, but they
could represent network bandwith in Gbps). Note that it's recommended
to not have zero as the load value for any instance metric since then
secondary instances are not well balanced.
instances (e.g. all instances use cpu% to report cpu usage, and not
something related to number of CPU seconds used if the CPUs are
different), and that they are normalised to between zero and one. Note
that it's recommended to not have zero as the load value for any
instance metric since then secondary instances are not well balanced.
On a perfectly balanced cluster (all nodes the same size, all
instances the same size and spread across the nodes equally), the
......@@ -202,8 +201,8 @@ primary node, in effect simulating the startup of such instances.
.SS EXCLUSION TAGS
The exclusion tags mecanism is designed to prevent instances which run
the same workload (e.g. two DNS servers) to land on the same node,
The exclusion tags mechanism is designed to prevent instances which
run the same workload (e.g. two DNS servers) to land on the same node,
which would make the respective node a SPOF for the given service.
It works by tagging instances with certain tags and then building
......
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