Gremlin Scenario: Linux host failure

How it works

How this Scenario works

This Scenario shuts down a percentage of your Linux hosts, simulating real-world hardware failures, power outages, or cloud instance terminations. It lets you observe whether your infrastructure can handle the loss of multiple hosts simultaneously.

Use cases

Why run this Scenario?

Validate that your load balancers detect failed Linux hosts and redistribute traffic to healthy ones.
Test your infrastructure's capacity to absorb workload when hosts are lost.
Verify that auto-recovery mechanisms (such as cloud auto-scaling groups) replace failed Linux instances.
Build confidence in your migration to cloud-based infrastructure by understanding host failure behavior.

Result

What to expect when you run it

When a percentage of Linux hosts are shut down, remaining hosts absorb the workload and services continue running without interruption.

Keep going

More Scenarios to try

Kubernetes packet loss

Ensure your Kubernetes systems can detect and route around resources that fail health checks. This Scenario gradually increases packet loss to validate liveness/readiness probe and load balancer behavior.

Container packet loss

Ensure your containerized systems can detect and route around resources that fail health checks. This Scenario gradually increases packet loss to validate health check and load balancer behavior.

Windows packet loss

Ensure your Windows systems can detect and route around resources that fail health checks. This Scenario gradually increases packet loss to validate health check and load balancer behavior.

Linux host failure