ansible-baseline
A baseline playbook for testing Ansible performance
Notes
These playbooks are meant to be run with whatever your inventory is, and make no assumptions about that inventory.
The only thing to note, is that ansible_connection will be
overridden for each play, to either local, ssh, or paramiko
for testing performance amongst different connection methods.
Use
$ ansible-playbook -i /path/to/inventory playbook.yml
Tags
playbook: playbook.yml
play #1 (all): Local baseline TAGS: [local]
TASK TAGS: [include, local]
play #2 (all): SSH baseline TAGS: [ssh]
TASK TAGS: [include, ssh]
play #3 (all): SSH+pipelining baseline TAGS: [pipelining,ssh]
TASK TAGS: [include, pipelining, ssh]
play #4 (all): Paramiko baseline TAGS: [paramiko]
TASK TAGS: [include, paramiko]
Baseline callback plugin
This repo ships a custom callback plugin named baseline that does
not require whitelisting, and will always run.
Parameters
| Parameter | Choices/Defaults | Configuration | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| display_recap | (yes)/no | [baseline]
display_recap = yes
env:BASELINE_DISPLAY_RECAP
|
Controls whether the recap is printed at the end, useful if you will automatically process the output files |
| json_file | /tmp/baseline.json | [baseline]
json_file = /tmp/baseline.json
env:BASELINE_JSON_FILE
|
Path to JSON file for use with write_json |
| show_host_timings | (yes)/no | [baseline]
show_host_timings = yes
env:BASELINE_SHOW_HOST_TIMINGS
|
This adds host timings per task |
| write_json | yes/(no) | [baseline]
write_json = no
env:BASELINE_WRITE_JSON
|
Writes output to a JSON file |
Output description
The output of the callback will look similar to:
Play: Local baseline ************************************************** 68.74s
Gather Facts ------------------------------------------------------- 2.78s
localhost0 ............................................. 1.99s / 0.00s
localhost1 ............................................. 1.71s / 0.02s
localhost2 ............................................. 1.75s / 0.04s
localhost3 ............................................. 1.61s / 0.06s
localhost4 ............................................. 1.79s / 0.08s
localhost5 ............................................. 0.97s / 1.65s
localhost6 ............................................. 0.93s / 1.70s
localhost7 ............................................. 0.89s / 1.77s
localhost8 ............................................. 0.91s / 1.80s
localhost9 ............................................. 0.86s / 1.92s
- The first line in the output above is the name of the play, and the
execution time for that play. In this case
68.74s. - The second line in the output shows the name of the task, and the
execution time for that task. In this case
2.78s. - The remaining lines are host timings
- The first number is the execution time for the specific host
- The second number is the time the host was waiting in the queue before starting execution
Testing Matrix
There are a few things that this baseline is ignorant of, that should be accounted for in a testing matrix.
Those configurations are things such as:
- Use of password auth via
sshpassinstead of key based auth - Use of a jumphost/bastion via
ProxyCommand - Whether
ControlPersistis enabled or not - Use of
become - Number of
--forks
Goals
This project is a minimal baseline representing the fundamental base functionality of Ansible for purposes of performance testing. Not all modules will be used, and only a small core subset are necessary.
This project is not designed to test Ansible functionality.
In addition, this project will be versioned to allow for changes that do not impact the ability for comparisons.