summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/docs
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorMatthew Jones <matburt@redhat.com>2018-02-05 15:48:48 +0100
committerMatthew Jones <matburt@redhat.com>2018-02-05 15:49:01 +0100
commit8e94a9e5996b5c8dd738298b956b87db1e364028 (patch)
treeb7b9ac18735952f634f7a190b844d5f96247fdbf /docs
parentMerge pull request #1130 from shanemcd/fix-etcd-template (diff)
downloadawx-8e94a9e5996b5c8dd738298b956b87db1e364028.tar.xz
awx-8e94a9e5996b5c8dd738298b956b87db1e364028.zip
Adding capacity docs
Updating capacity for callback jobs to include parent process impact
Diffstat (limited to 'docs')
-rw-r--r--docs/capacity.md99
1 files changed, 99 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/capacity.md b/docs/capacity.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..ceee3c42c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/capacity.md
@@ -0,0 +1,99 @@
+## Ansible Tower Capacity Determination and Job Impact
+
+The Ansible Tower capacity system determines how many jobs can run on an Instance given the amount of resources
+available to the Instance and the size of the jobs that are running (referred herafter as `Impact`).
+The algorithm used to determine this is based entirely on two things:
+
+* How much memory is available to the system (`mem_capacity`)
+* How much CPU is available to the system (`cpu_capacity`)
+
+Capacity also impacts Instance Groups. Since Groups are composed of Instances, likewise Instances can be
+assigned to multiple Groups. This means that impact to one Instance can potentially affect the overall capacity of
+other Groups.
+
+Instance Groups (not Instances themselves) can be assigned to be used by Jobs at various levels (see clustering.md).
+When the Task Manager is preparing its graph to determine which Group a Job will run on it will commit the capacity of
+an Instance Group to a job that hasn't or isn't ready to start yet.
+
+Finally, if only one Instance is available, in smaller configurations, for a Job to run the Task Manager will allow that
+Job to run on the Instance even if it would push the Instance over capacity. We do this as a way to guarantee that Jobs
+themselves won't get clogged as a result of an under provisioned system.
+
+These concepts mean that, in general, Capacity and Impact is not a zero-sum system relative to Jobs and Instances/Instance Groups
+
+### Resource Determination For Capacity Algorithm
+
+
+The capacity algorithms are defined in order to determine how many `forks` a system is capable of running simultaneously. This controls how
+many systems Ansible itself will communicate with simultaneously. Increasing the number of forks a Tower system is running will, in general,
+allow jobs to run faster by performing more work in parallel. The tradeoff is that will increase the load on the system which could cause work
+to slow down overall.
+
+Tower can operate in two modes when determining capacity. `mem_capacity` (the default) will allow you to overcommit CPU resources while protecting the system
+from running out of memory. If most of your work is not cpu-bound then selecting this mode will maximize the number of forks.
+
+#### Memory Relative Capacity
+`mem_capacity` is calculated relative to the amount of memory needed per-fork. Taking into account the overhead for Tower's internal components this comes out
+to be about `100MB` per-fork. When considering the amount of memory available to Ansible jobs the capacity algorithm will reserve 2GB of memory to account
+for the presence of other Tower services. The algorithm itself looks like this:
+
+ (mem - 2048) / mem_per_fork
+
+As an example:
+
+ (4096 - 2048) / 100 == ~20
+
+So a system with 4GB of memory would be capable of running 20 forks. The value `mem_per_fork` can be controlled by setting the Tower settings value
+(or environment variable) `SYSTEM_TASK_FORKS_MEM` which defaults to `100`.
+
+#### CPU Relative Capacity
+
+Often times Ansible workloads can be fairly cpu-bound. In these cases sometimes reducing the simultaneous workload allows more tasks to run faster and reduces
+the average time-to-completion of those jobs.
+
+Just as the Tower `mem_capacity` algorithm uses the amount of memory need per-fork, the `cpu_capacity` algorithm looks at the amount of cpu resources is needed
+per fork. The baseline value for this is `4` forks per-core. The algorithm itself looks like this:
+
+ cpus * fork_per_cpu
+
+For example a 4-core system:
+
+ 4 * 4 == 16
+
+The value `fork_per_cpu` can be controlled by setting the Tower settings value (or environment variable) `SYSTEM_TASK_FORKS_CPU` which defaults to `4`.
+
+### Job Impacts Relative To Capacity
+
+When selecting the capacity it's important to understand how each job type affects capacity.
+
+It's helpful to understand what `forks` mean to Ansible: http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/intro_configuration.html#forks
+
+The default forks value for ansible is `5`. However, if Tower knows that you're running against fewer systems than that then the actual concurrency value
+will be lower.
+
+When a job is run, Tower will add `1` to the number of forks selected to compensate for the Ansible parent process. So if you are running a playbook against `5`
+systems with a `forks` value of `5` then the actual `forks` value from the perspective of Job Impact will be 6.
+
+#### Impact of Job types in Tower
+
+Jobs and Ad-hoc jobs follow the above model `forks + 1`.
+
+Other job types have a fixed impact:
+
+* Inventory Updates: 1
+* Project Updates: 1
+* System Jobs: 5
+
+### Selecting the right capacity
+
+Selecting between a `memory` focused capacity algorithm and a `cpu` focused capacity for your Tower use means you'll be selecting between a minimum
+and maximum value. In the above examples the CPU capacity would allow a maximum of 16 forks while the Memory capacity would allow 20. For some systems
+the disparity between these can be large and often times you may want to have a balance between these two.
+
+An `Instance` field `capacity_adjustment` allows you to select how much of one or the other you want to consider. It is represented as a value between 0.0
+and 1.0. If set to a value of `1.0` then the largest value will be used. In the above example, that would be Memory capacity so a value of `20` forks would
+be selected. If set to a value of `0.0` then the smallest value will be used. A value of `0.5` would be a 50/50 balance between the two algorithms which would
+be `18`:
+
+ 16 + (20 - 16) * 0.5 == 18
+