Adventures of a Small Time OpenStack Sysadmin Chapter 026 - OpenStack Watcher Optimization Service

Adventures of a Small Time OpenStack Sysadmin relate the experience of converting a small VMware cluster into two small OpenStack clusters, and the adventures and friends I made along the way.

Adventures of a Small Time OpenStack Sysadmin Chapter 026 - OpenStack Watcher Optimization Service

My reference for installing Watcher:

https://docs.openstack.org/watcher/yoga/

Install notes:

The usual problem where the Python2.7 CLI package name is python-watcherclient as displayed in the docs, but the project has moved into Python3 some time ago and the new Python3 CLI package name is python3-watcherclient.  Seriously, its like ALL the abandoned projects have this minor installation bug.  

The Yoga docs advise installing on Ubuntu 16.04 (LTS), which was, IIRC, released six years ago and its five year security maintenance process ended over a year ago, so clearly Watcher has been a completely abandoned project for some years now.  The docs marketing always reads so optimistic and upbeat and feature-full, and then when you install a dead project the detailed instruction tasks are all about how you require a Commodore 64 floppy drive as part of the install process resulting in that sinking feeling in the stomach, this isn't going to be good.  And it wasn't.

Default region_name in the template is regionOne and needs to be changed to RegionOne, another ongoing "OpenStack-wide" problem.

There was some craziness where "su -s /bin/sh -c "watcher-db-manage --config-file /etc/watcher/watcher.conf upgrade" did not work nearly as well as watcher-db-manage --config-file /etc/watcher/watcher.conf create_schema with numerous logs about tables not existing, but in the end I got it to 'work'

I guess Watcher has been part of a "hazing" thing for new OpenStack admins for about a decade now, where its traditional to ask Watcher to optimize your cluster, let it try to migrate some hosts, then because the new admin never tested migration and would never guess that OpenStack would let itself destroy the instances, the instances are destroyed in failed migrations.  Hope you have good backups!  Apparently this hazing "joke" has been going on since at least the mid 10s.  So, yeah, I found out I have good backups too, just like happens to every other new openstack admin who tries Watcher optimization service.

Into the cool sounding Freezer tomorrow.

Stay tuned for the next chapter!