Configurable Parallel Execution of System Tests within the Strimzi Project

Czech title

Konfigurovatelná paralelní exekuce systémových testů v rámci projektu Strimzi

Language

English

Abstract

In recent years, many companies have adopted Kubernetes and the microservices architec- ture it enables. This technology was opened up many new possibilities not just for large companies, but also for small software developers. Kubernetes is a container-orchestration system and recently a new concept has emerged arround how to orchestrate the containers more efficiently - the Operator pattern. One such operator is developed and maintained under an open-source project called Strimzi. The Strimzi project gathers together several tools, which take care of the deployment of Apache Kafka on Kubernetes. Since Kafka is a complex, horizontally scalable, distributed system, you can imagine that its installation is a relatively complex action. Therefore, one of the biggest challenges of using Kubernetes is how to effectively and quickly test projects such as Kafka and Strimzi and at the same time verify integration with other similar products. The resources needed by Kubernetes are much more demanding compared to the deployment of Kafka on virtual machines or typi- cal container instances. To tackle this problem, we adopt the principles of parallel execution and created a mechanism within Strimzi system tests, which runs tests in parallel against only a single Kubernetes cluster. Furthermore, we proposed a brand new architecture for the end-to-end tests. The improvements aim at scalability and reduction of execution time. Through several experiments, this paper shows that proposed mechanism with different configurations of the Kubernetes cluster (including number of Kubernetes nodes, number of tests and suites executed in parallel) significantly accelerated execution of the tests.

Keywords

Strimzi, Kubernetes, Orchestration, Clustering, Azure, Openstack, AWS, Apache Kafka, Distributed systems, middleware, end-to-end tests, paralelism, multi-threaded execution, race condition, synchronization, scalability, operators

Department

Department of Intelligent Systems FIT BUT

Degree Programme

Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence, Specialization Software Verification and Testing

Files

Status

defended, grade A

Date

17 June 2022

Reviewer

Rogalewicz Adam, doc. Mgr., Ph.D.

Committee

Vojnar Tomáš, prof. Ing., Ph.D. (DITS FIT BUT), předseda
Češka Milan, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (DITS FIT BUT), člen
Meduna Alexander, prof. RNDr., CSc. (DIFS FIT BUT), člen
Peringer Petr, Dr. Ing. (DITS FIT BUT), člen
Smrčka Aleš, Ing., Ph.D. (DITS FIT BUT), člen
Veselý Vladimír, Ing., Ph.D. (DIFS FIT BUT), člen

Citation

ORSÁK, Maroš. Configurable Parallel Execution of System Tests within the Strimzi Project. Brno, 2022. Master's Thesis. Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Information Technology. 2022-06-17. Supervised by Češka Milan. Available from: https://www-dev.fit.vutbr.cz/study/thesis/25008/

BibTeX

@mastersthesis{FITMT25008,
    author = "Maro\v{s} Ors\'{a}k",
    type = "Master's thesis",
    title = "Configurable Parallel Execution of System Tests within the Strimzi Project",
    school = "Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Information Technology",
    year = 2022,
    location = "Brno, CZ",
    language = "english",
    url = "https://www.fit.vut.cz/study/thesis/25008/"
}