grpc/tools/run_tests/stress_test/README.md

Running Stress tests on Google Container Engine
=======================================

### **Glossary**:
* GCP: Google Cloud Platform
* GCE: Google Compute Engine
* GKE: Google Container Engine
* GCP console: https://console.cloud.google.com

### **Setup Instructions**
#### *On GCP:*
1. Login to GCP with your Google account (for example, your @gmail account) at https://cloud.google.com. If do not have a Google account, you will have to create an account first.
2. Enable billing on Google cloud platform. Instructions [here](https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/docs/before-you-begin)  (see the '*Enable billing*' section).
3. Create a Project from the [GCP console](https://console.cloud.google.com).i.e Click on the project dropdown box on the top right (to the right if the search box) and click '*Create a project*' option.
4. Enable the Container Engine API. Instructions [here](https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/docs/before-you-begin)  (See the '*Enable the Container Engine API*’ section). Alternatively, you can do the following:
    - 4.1 Click on the '*Products & Services*' icon on the top left (i.e the icon with three horizontal bars) and select '*API Manager*'
    - 4.2 Select the '*Container Engine API*' under '*Google Cloud APIs*' on the main page. Note that you might have to click on '*More*' under '*Google Cloud APIs*' to see the '*Container Engine API*' link
    - 4.3 Click on the '*Enable*' button. If the API is already enabled, the button's label would be '*Disable*' instead (do NOT click the button if its label is '*Disable*')
5. Create a Cluster from the GCP console. i.e Go to the Container Engine section from GCP console and click '*Create Container Cluster*' and follow the instructions.
    - 5.1. The instructions for 'Name/Zone/MachineType' etc are [here](https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/docs/clusters/operations) (**NOTE**: The page also has instructions to setting up default clusters and configuring `kubectl`. We will be doing that later)
    - 5.2. For the cluster size, a smaller size of < 10 GCE instances is good enough for our use cases - assuming that we are planning to run a reasonably small number of stress client instances. For the machine type, something like '2 vCPUs 7.5 GB' (available in the drop down box) should be good enough.
    - 5.3. **IMPORTANT**: Before hitting the '*Create*' button, click on '*More*' link just above the '*Create*' button and Select '*Enabled*' for BigQuery , '*Enabled*' for Cloud Platform and '*Read/Write*' for Cloud User Accounts.
    - 5.4. Create the cluster by clicking '*Create*' button.

#### *On your machine* (or the machine from which stress tests on GKE are launched):
1. You need a working gRPC repository on your machine. If you do not have it, clone the grpc repository from github (https://github.com/grpc/grpc) and follow the instructions [here](https://github.com/grpc/grpc/blob/master/INSTALL.md)
2. Install Docker. Instructions [here](https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/)
3. Install Google Cloud SDK. Instructions [here](https://cloud.google.com/sdk/). This installs the `gcloud` tool
4. Install `kubectl`, Kubernetes command line tool using `gcloud`. i.e 
    - `$ gcloud components update kubectl`
5. Install Google python client apis:
    - `‘$ sudo pip install --upgrade google-api-python-client’`
    -  **Note**: Do `$ sudo apt-get install python-pip` (or `$ easy_install -U pip`) if you do not have pip
6. Install the `requests` Python package if you don’t have it already by doing `sudo pip install requests`. More details regarding `requests` package are [here](http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/user/install/)
7. Set the `gcloud` defaults: See the instructions [here](https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/docs/before-you-begin) under "*Set gcloud defaults*" section)
    - Make sure you also fetch the cluster credentials for `kubectl` command to use. I.e `$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials CLUSTER_NAME`

### **Launching Stress tests**

The stress tests are launched by the following script (path is relative to GRPC root directory) :
`tools/run_tests/stress_test/run_stress_tests_on_gke.py`

The script has several parameters and you can find out more details by using the `--help` flag.
  - `<grpc_root_dir>$ tools/run_tests/stress_test/run_stress_tests_on_gke.py --help`

> **Example**
> `$ tools/run_tests/Stress_test/run_stress_tests_on_gke.py --project_id=sree-gce --test_duration_secs=180 --num_clients=5`

> Launches the 5 instances of stress test clients, 1 instance of stress test server and runs the test for 180 seconds. The test would be run on the default container cluster (that you have set in `gcloud`) in the project `sree-gce`.  

> Note: we currently do not have the ability to launch multiple instances of the server. This can be added very easily in future