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.

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.

Prerequisites

• 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

Mandatory tunables

Tunable	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 tunables

Tunable	Description	Notes
RAMP_TIME	Period to wait before and after injecting chaos (in seconds).	For example, 30s. For more information, go to ramp time.
DEFAULT_HEALTH_CHECK	Determines if you wish to run the default health check which is present inside the fault.	Default: 'true'. For more information, go to default health check.

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'