Re: [openstack-dev] [nova] Interesting bug when unshelving an instance in an AZ and the AZ is gone

[Jay Pipes]

On 10/16/2017 11:22 AM, Matt Riedemann wrote:

This is interesting from the user point of view:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/nova/+bug/1723880

- The user creates an instance in a non-default AZ.
- They shelve offload the instance.
- The admin deletes the AZ that the instance was using, for whatever 
reason.
- The user unshelves the instance which goes back through scheduling and 
fails with NoValidHost because the AZ on the original request spec no 
longer exists.


Now the question is what, if anything, do we do about this bug? Some notes:

1. How reasonable is it for a user to expect in a stable production 
environment that AZs are going to be deleted from under them? We 
actually have a spec related to this but with AZ renames:


https://review.openstack.org/#/c/446446/


I don't think it's reasonable for a user to expect an AZ suddenly gets 
*deleted* from under them, no.


That said, I think it's reasonable for operators to want to *rename* an 
AZ. And because AZs in Nova aren't really *things* [1], attempting to 
change the name of an AZ involves a bunch of nasty DB updates (including 
shadow tables). [2]


2. Should we null out the instance.availability_zone when it's shelved 
offloaded like we do for the instance.host and instance.node attributes? 
Similarly, we would not take into account the 
RequestSpec.availability_zone when scheduling during unshelve. I tend to 
prefer this option because once you unshelve offload an instance, it's 
no longer associated with a host and therefore no longer associated with 
an AZ. However, is it reasonable to assume that the user doesn't care 
that the instance, once unshelved, is no longer in the originally 
requested AZ? Probably not a safe assumption.


Yeah, I don't think this is appropriate.

3. When a user unshelves, they can't propose a new AZ (and I don't think 
we want to add that capability to the unshelve API). So if the original 
AZ is gone, should we automatically remove the 
RequestSpec.availability_zone when scheduling? I tend to not like this 
as it's very implicit and the user could see the AZ on their instance 
change before and after unshelve and be confused.


I don't think this is something we should add to the public API (for 
reasons Matt stated in a followup email to Dean). Instead, I think the 
"rename AZ" functionality should do the needful DB-related tasks to 
change the instance.availability_zone for shelved instances to the new 
AZ name...


4. We could simply do nothing about this specific bug and assert the 
behavior is correct. The user requested an instance in a specific AZ, 
shelved that instance and when they wanted to unshelve it, it's no 
longer available so it fails. The user would have to delete the instance 
and create a new instance from the shelve snapshot image in a new AZ. If 
we implemented Sylvain's spec in #1 above, maybe we don't have this 
problem going forward since you couldn't remove/delete an AZ when there 
are even shelved offloaded instances still tied to it.


I think it's reasonable to prevent deletion of an AZ (whatever that 
actually means... see [1]) when the AZ "has instances in it" (whatever 
that means... see [1])


Best,
-jay


Other options?



[1] AZs in Nova are just metadata key/values on aggregates and string 
values in the instance.availability_zone DB table field that have no FK 
relationship to said metadata key/values


[2] Note that, as I've said before, the entire concept of an 
availability zone in Nova/Cinder/Neutron is completely fictional and 
improperly pretending to be an AWS EC2 availability zone. AZs in Nova 
pretend to be failure domains. They are not anything of the sort.


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Re: [openstack-dev] [nova] Interesting bug when unshelving an instance in an AZ and the AZ is gone

[Chris Friesen]

On 10/16/2017 09:22 AM, Matt Riedemann wrote:


2. Should we null out the instance.availability_zone when it's shelved offloaded
like we do for the instance.host and instance.node attributes? Similarly, we
would not take into account the RequestSpec.availability_zone when scheduling
during unshelve. I tend to prefer this option because once you unshelve offload
an instance, it's no longer associated with a host and therefore no longer
associated with an AZ.


This statement isn't true in the case where the user specifically requested a 
non-default AZ at boot time.



However, is it reasonable to assume that the user doesn't
care that the instance, once unshelved, is no longer in the originally requested
AZ? Probably not a safe assumption.


If they didn't request a non-default AZ then I think we could remove it.


3. When a user unshelves, they can't propose a new AZ (and I don't think we want
to add that capability to the unshelve API). So if the original AZ is gone,
should we automatically remove the RequestSpec.availability_zone when
scheduling? I tend to not like this as it's very implicit and the user could see
the AZ on their instance change before and after unshelve and be confused.


I think allowing the user to specify an AZ on unshelve might be a reasonable 
option.  Or maybe just allow modifying the AZ of a shelved instance without 
unshelving it via a PUT on /servers/{server_id}.



4. We could simply do nothing about this specific bug and assert the behavior is
correct. The user requested an instance in a specific AZ, shelved that instance
and when they wanted to unshelve it, it's no longer available so it fails. The
user would have to delete the instance and create a new instance from the shelve
snapshot image in a new AZ.


I'm inclined to feel that this is operator error.  If they want to delete an AZ 
that has shelved instances then they should talk with their customers and update 
the stored AZ in the DB to a new "valid" one.  (Though currently this would 
require manual DB operations.)


If we implemented Sylvain's spec in #1 above, maybe

we don't have this problem going forward since you couldn't remove/delete an AZ
when there are even shelved offloaded instances still tied to it.


I kind of think it would be okay to disallow deleting AZs with shelved instances 
in them.


Chris

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Re: [openstack-dev] [nova] Interesting bug when unshelving an instance in an AZ and the AZ is gone

[Matt Riedemann]

On 10/16/2017 11:00 AM, Dean Troyer wrote:

[not having a dog in this hunt, this is what I would expect as a cloud consumer]


Thanks for the user perspective, that's what I'm looking for here, and 
operator perspective of course.




On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 10:22 AM, Matt Riedemann  wrote:

- The user creates an instance in a non-default AZ.
- They shelve offload the instance.
- The admin deletes the AZ that the instance was using, for whatever reason.
- The user unshelves the instance which goes back through scheduling and
fails with NoValidHost because the AZ on the original request spec no longer
exists.



1. How reasonable is it for a user to expect in a stable production
environment that AZs are going to be deleted from under them? We actually
have a spec related to this but with AZ renames:


Change happens...


2. Should we null out the instance.availability_zone when it's shelved
offloaded like we do for the instance.host and instance.node attributes?
Similarly, we would not take into account the RequestSpec.availability_zone
when scheduling during unshelve. I tend to prefer this option because once
you unshelve offload an instance, it's no longer associated with a host and
therefore no longer associated with an AZ. However, is it reasonable to
assume that the user doesn't care that the instance, once unshelved, is no
longer in the originally requested AZ? Probably not a safe assumption.


Agreed, unless we keep track that the user specified a default or no
AZ at create.


We do keep track of what the user originally requested, that is this 
RequestSpec object thing I keep referring to.




I think nulling the AZ when the original doesn't exist would be
reasonable from a user standpoint, but I'd feel handcuffed if that
happens and I can not select a new AZ. Or throwing a specific error
and letting the user handle it in #3 below:


At the point of failure, the API has done an RPC cast and returned a 202 
to the user, so the only way to provide a message like this to the user 
would be to check if the original AZ still exists in the API. We could 
do that, it would just be something to be aware of.





3. When a user unshelves, they can't propose a new AZ (and I don't think we
want to add that capability to the unshelve API). So if the original AZ is


Here is my question... if I can specify an AZ on create, why not on
unshelve?  Is it the image location movement under the hood?


I just don't think it's ever come up. The reason I hesitate to add the 
ability to the unshelve API is more or less rooted in my bias toward not 
liking shelve/unshelve in general because of how complicated and 
half-baked it is (we've had a lot of bugs from these APIs, some of which 
are still unresolved). That's not the user's fault though, so one could 
argue that if we're not going to deprecate these APIs, we need to make 
them more robust. We, as developers, also don't have any idea how many 
users are actually using the shelve API, so it's hard to know if we 
should spend any time on improving it.





gone, should we automatically remove the RequestSpec.availability_zone when
scheduling? I tend to not like this as it's very implicit and the user could
see the AZ on their instance change before and after unshelve and be
confused.


Agreed that explicit is better than implicit.


4. We could simply do nothing about this specific bug and assert the
behavior is correct. The user requested an instance in a specific AZ,
shelved that instance and when they wanted to unshelve it, it's no longer
available so it fails. The user would have to delete the instance and create
a new instance from the shelve snapshot image in a new AZ. If we implemented


I do not have the list of things in my head that are preserved in
shelve/unshelve that would be lost in a recreate, but that's where my
worry would come.  Presumably that is why I shelved in the first place
rather than snapshotting the server and removing it.  Depends on the
cost models too, if I lose my grandfathered-in pricing by being forced
to recreate I amy be unhappy.


The volumes and ports remain attached to the shelved instance, only the 
guest on the hypervisor is destroyed. It doesn't change anything about 
quota - you retain quota usage for a shelved instance so you have room 
in your quota to unshelve it later.


From what I can tell, the os-simple-tenant-usage API will still count 
the instance and it's consumed disk/ram/cpu against you even though the 
guest is deleted from the hypervisor while the instance is shelved 
offloaded. So the operator is happy about shelved offloaded instances 
because that means they have more free capacity for new instances and 
moving things, but the user is still getting charged the same, if your 
billing model is based on os-simple-tenant-usage (which Telemetry uses I 
believe).






Sylvain's spec in #1 above, maybe we don't have this problem going forward
since you couldn't remove/delete an AZ when there 

Re: [openstack-dev] [nova] Interesting bug when unshelving an instance in an AZ and the AZ is gone

[Dean Troyer]

[not having a dog in this hunt, this is what I would expect as a cloud consumer]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 10:22 AM, Matt Riedemann  wrote:
> - The user creates an instance in a non-default AZ.
> - They shelve offload the instance.
> - The admin deletes the AZ that the instance was using, for whatever reason.
> - The user unshelves the instance which goes back through scheduling and
> fails with NoValidHost because the AZ on the original request spec no longer
> exists.

> 1. How reasonable is it for a user to expect in a stable production
> environment that AZs are going to be deleted from under them? We actually
> have a spec related to this but with AZ renames:

Change happens...

> 2. Should we null out the instance.availability_zone when it's shelved
> offloaded like we do for the instance.host and instance.node attributes?
> Similarly, we would not take into account the RequestSpec.availability_zone
> when scheduling during unshelve. I tend to prefer this option because once
> you unshelve offload an instance, it's no longer associated with a host and
> therefore no longer associated with an AZ. However, is it reasonable to
> assume that the user doesn't care that the instance, once unshelved, is no
> longer in the originally requested AZ? Probably not a safe assumption.

Agreed, unless we keep track that the user specified a default or no
AZ at create.

I think nulling the AZ when the original doesn't exist would be
reasonable from a user standpoint, but I'd feel handcuffed if that
happens and I can not select a new AZ. Or throwing a specific error
and letting the user handle it in #3 below:

> 3. When a user unshelves, they can't propose a new AZ (and I don't think we
> want to add that capability to the unshelve API). So if the original AZ is

Here is my question... if I can specify an AZ on create, why not on
unshelve?  Is it the image location movement under the hood?

> gone, should we automatically remove the RequestSpec.availability_zone when
> scheduling? I tend to not like this as it's very implicit and the user could
> see the AZ on their instance change before and after unshelve and be
> confused.

Agreed that explicit is better than implicit.

> 4. We could simply do nothing about this specific bug and assert the
> behavior is correct. The user requested an instance in a specific AZ,
> shelved that instance and when they wanted to unshelve it, it's no longer
> available so it fails. The user would have to delete the instance and create
> a new instance from the shelve snapshot image in a new AZ. If we implemented

I do not have the list of things in my head that are preserved in
shelve/unshelve that would be lost in a recreate, but that's where my
worry would come.  Presumably that is why I shelved in the first place
rather than snapshotting the server and removing it.  Depends on the
cost models too, if I lose my grandfathered-in pricing by being forced
to recreate I amy be unhappy.


> Sylvain's spec in #1 above, maybe we don't have this problem going forward
> since you couldn't remove/delete an AZ when there are even shelved offloaded
> instances still tied to it.

As a user I probably do not mind this, as an operator I'd likely be unhappy.

dt

-- 

Dean Troyer
dtro...@gmail.com

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[openstack-dev] [nova] Interesting bug when unshelving an instance in an AZ and the AZ is gone

[Matt Riedemann]

This is interesting from the user point of view:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/nova/+bug/1723880

- The user creates an instance in a non-default AZ.
- They shelve offload the instance.
- The admin deletes the AZ that the instance was using, for whatever reason.
- The user unshelves the instance which goes back through scheduling and 
fails with NoValidHost because the AZ on the original request spec no 
longer exists.


Now the question is what, if anything, do we do about this bug? Some notes:

1. How reasonable is it for a user to expect in a stable production 
environment that AZs are going to be deleted from under them? We 
actually have a spec related to this but with AZ renames:


https://review.openstack.org/#/c/446446/

2. Should we null out the instance.availability_zone when it's shelved 
offloaded like we do for the instance.host and instance.node attributes? 
Similarly, we would not take into account the 
RequestSpec.availability_zone when scheduling during unshelve. I tend to 
prefer this option because once you unshelve offload an instance, it's 
no longer associated with a host and therefore no longer associated with 
an AZ. However, is it reasonable to assume that the user doesn't care 
that the instance, once unshelved, is no longer in the originally 
requested AZ? Probably not a safe assumption.


3. When a user unshelves, they can't propose a new AZ (and I don't think 
we want to add that capability to the unshelve API). So if the original 
AZ is gone, should we automatically remove the 
RequestSpec.availability_zone when scheduling? I tend to not like this 
as it's very implicit and the user could see the AZ on their instance 
change before and after unshelve and be confused.


4. We could simply do nothing about this specific bug and assert the 
behavior is correct. The user requested an instance in a specific AZ, 
shelved that instance and when they wanted to unshelve it, it's no 
longer available so it fails. The user would have to delete the instance 
and create a new instance from the shelve snapshot image in a new AZ. If 
we implemented Sylvain's spec in #1 above, maybe we don't have this 
problem going forward since you couldn't remove/delete an AZ when there 
are even shelved offloaded instances still tied to it.


Other options?

--

Thanks,

Matt

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