Chaos Engineering with Redis

Chaos Engineering with Redis
Last Updated:
Categories: Chaos Engineering

Introduction

Gremlin is a simple, safe and secure service for performing Chaos Engineering experiments through a SaaS-based platform. Redis is an open source in-memory data structure store. Datadog is a monitoring service for cloud-scale applications, providing monitoring of servers, databases, tools, and services, through a SaaS-based data analytics platform. Datadog provides an integration to monitor Redis.

Chaos Engineering Hypothesis

For the purposes of this tutorial we will run Chaos Engineering experiments on Redis. Our Chaos Engineering hypothesis is that we need to constantly ensure we are monitoring latency and crash frequency as these are common issues that can appear when running Redis in production. To begin with, view the guide on Problems With Redis published by the Redis team.

Latency measures the average time in milliseconds it takes the Redis server to respond. Typical Redis latency for a 1GBits/s network is about 200 μs. Tracking latency is the most useful way to see impacts to Redis performance.

We know from the official Redis Cluster documentation that a Redis Cluster does not guarantee strong consistency. This tutorial will focus on doing Chaos Engineering with one Redis instance. In a future tutorial we will focus on Redis Cluster.

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial you will need the following:

  • 1 cloud infrastructure instance running Ubuntu 16.04
  • A Gremlin account (sign up here)
  • A Datadog account

Overview

This tutorial will walk you through the required steps to do Chaos Engineering with Redis.

  • Step 1 - Creating a Redis server
  • Step 2 - Installing Docker on each host
  • Step 3 - Installing Gremlin in a Docker container on each host
  • Step 4 - Installing Datadog in a Docker container on each host
  • Step 5 - Running the Redis Latency Chaos Engineering experiment
  • Step 6 - Additional Chaos Engineering experiments you can run with Gremlin

Step 1 - Creating a Redis server

First update the server:

bash
1sudo apt update

To compile Redis, run the following commands:

bash
1sudo apt-get install redis-server

Now start redis by running the following command:

bash
1redis-server --daemonize yes

A successful result will end with:

bash
1Configuration loaded

Now use the redis cli to confirm you can connect:

bash
1redis-cli

You will see the following as a successful result:

bash
1redis 127.0.0.1:6379>

Now type the following at the redis prompt:

bash
1ping

The successful result will be

bash
1PONG

Now type the following to store data in Redis:

bash
1set test "Time for Chaos Engineering with Redis!"

The successful result will be:

bash
1OK

Now type the following to retrieve your stored data:

bash
1get test

The successful result will be:

bash
1"Time for Chaos Engineering with Redis!"

Now exit the Redis prompt:

bash
1exit

Restart Redis:

bash
1sudo systemctl restart redis

Now use the redis cli:

bash
1redis-cli

Type the following at the redis cli prompt to return the data you stored previously:

bash
1get test

You will see the following if it is successfully returned:

bash
1Output"Time for Chaos Engineering with Redis!"

Now exit the Redis prompt:

bash
1exit

Step 2 - Installing Docker

In this step, you’ll install Docker.

Add Docker’s official GPG key:

bash
1curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Use the following command to set up the stable repository.

bash
1sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable"

Update the apt package index:

bash
1sudo apt-get update

Make sure you are about to install from the Docker repo instead of the default Ubuntu 16.04 repo:

bash
1apt-cache policy docker-ce

Install the latest version of Docker CE:

bash
1sudo apt-get install docker-ce

Docker should now be installed, the daemon started, and the process enabled to start on boot. Check that it is running:

bash
1sudo systemctl status docker

Type q to return to the prompt.

Make sure you are in the Docker usergroup, replace redis with your username:

bash
1sudo usermod -aG docker redis

Step 3 - Installing Gremlin On Each Host

After you have created your Gremlin account (sign up here) you will need to find your Gremlin Daemon credentials. Login to the Gremlin App using your Company name and sign-on credentials. These were emailed to you when you signed up to start using Gremlin.

Navigate to Team Settings and click on your Team.

Store your Gremlin agent credentials as environment variables, for example:

bash
1export GREMLIN_TEAM_ID=3f242793-018a-5ad5-9211-fb958f8dc084
bash
1export GREMLIN_TEAM_SECRET=eac3a31b-4a6f-6778-1bdb813a6fdc

Next run the Gremlin Daemon in a Container.

Use docker run to pull the official Gremlin Docker image and run the Gremlin daemon:

bash
1sudo docker run -d \ --net=host \ --pid=host \ --cap-add=NET_ADMIN \ --cap-add=SYS_BOOT \ --cap-add=SYS_TIME \ --cap-add=KILL \ -e GREMLIN_TEAM_ID="${GREMLIN_TEAM_ID}" \ -e GREMLIN_TEAM_SECRET="${GREMLIN_TEAM_SECRET}" \ -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \ -v /var/log/gremlin:/var/log/gremlin \ -v /var/lib/gremlin:/var/lib/gremlin \ gremlin/gremlin daemon

Use docker ps to see all running Docker containers:

bash
1sudo docker ps
bash
1CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMESb281e749ac33 gremlin/gremlin "/entrypoint.sh daem…" 5 seconds ago Up 4 seconds relaxed_heisenberg

Jump into your Gremlin container with an interactive shell (replace b281e749ac33 with the real ID of your Gremlin container):

bash
1sudo docker exec -it b281e749ac33 /bin/bash

From within the container, check out the available attack types:

bash
1gremlin help attack-container
bash
1Usage: gremlin attack-container CONTAINER TYPE [type-specific-options]Type "gremlin help attack-container TYPE" for more details: blackhole # An attack which drops all matching network traffic cpu # An attack which consumes CPU resources io # An attack which consumes IO resources latency # An attack which adds latency to all matching network traffic memory # An attack which consumes memory packet_loss # An attack which introduces packet loss to all matching network traffic shutdown # An attack which forces the target to shutdown dns # An attack which blocks access to DNS servers time_travel # An attack which changes the system time. disk # An attack which consumes disk resources process_killer # An attack which kills the specified process

Step 4 - Installing the Datadog agent in a Docker container

To install Datadog in a Docker container you can use the Datadog Docker easy one-step install.

Run the following command, replacing the item in red with your own API key:

bash
1sudo docker run -d --name dd-agent -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro -v /proc/:/host/proc/:ro -v /sys/fs/cgroup/:/host/sys/fs/cgroup:ro -e DD_API_KEY=7cfe87ce1756aea datadog/agent:latest

It will take a few minutes for Datadog to spin up the Datadog container, collect metrics on your existing containers and display them in the Datadog App.

Step 5 - Running the Redis Latency Chaos Engineering Experiment

We will use the Gremlin CLI attack command to create a latency attack.

Now use the Gremlin CLI (gremlin) to run a latency attack against the host from a Gremlin container:

bash
1sudo docker run -d \ --net=host \ --pid=host \ --cap-add=NET_ADMIN \ --cap-add=SYS_BOOT \ --cap-add=SYS_TIME \ --cap-add=KILL \ -e GREMLIN_TEAM_ID="${GREMLIN_TEAM_ID}" \ -e GREMLIN_TEAM_SECRET="${GREMLIN_TEAM_SECRET}" \ -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \ -v /var/log/gremlin:/var/log/gremlin \ -v /var/lib/gremlin:/var/lib/gremlin \ gremlin/gremlin attack latency

This attack will inject latency to the Redis host.

Now exit the container by running the following command:

bash
1exit

Step 6 - Additional Chaos Engineering experiments to run on Redis

There are many Chaos Engineering experiments you could possibly run on your Redis infrastructure:

  • Monitoring - do your monitoring tools enable you to monitor changes in Redis latency?
  • Time Travel Gremlin - will changing the clock time of the host impact how Redis processes data?
  • Latency & Packet Loss Gremlins - will they impact the ability to use Redis
  • Disk Gremlin - will filling up the disk crash the host?

We encourage you to run these Chaos Engineering experiments and share your findings! To get access to Gremlin, sign up here.

Conclusion

This tutorial has explored how to install Redis and Gremlin in Docker containers for your Chaos Engineering experiments. We then ran a shutdown Chaos Engineering experiment on the Redis container using the Gremlin Latency attack.

Related

Avoid downtime. Use Gremlin to turn failure into resilience.

Gremlin empowers you to proactively root out failure before it causes downtime. See how you can harness chaos to build resilient systems by requesting a demo of Gremlin.

Get started