grpc

Generate requests for a gRPC service and and collect latency and error-related metrics.

Usage example

In this experiment, the grpc task generates call requests for a gRPC service hosted at hello.default:50051, defined in the protobuf file located at grpc.protoURL, with a gRPC method named helloworld.Greeter.SayHello. Metrics collected by this task are viewable with an Iter8 dashboard.

Single method:

iter8 k launch \
--set "tasks={grpc}" \
--set grpc.host=routeguide.default:50051 \
--set grpc.protoURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grpc/grpc-go/v1.52.0/examples/route_guide/routeguide/route_guide.proto \
--set grpc.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.GetFeature \
--set grpc.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/unary.json

Multiple methods:

iter8 k launch \
--set "tasks={grpc}" \
--set grpc.host=routeguide.default:50051 \
--set grpc.protoURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grpc/grpc-go/v1.52.0/examples/route_guide/routeguide/route_guide.proto \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.GetFeature \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/unary.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.ListFeatures \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/server.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.RecordRoute \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/client.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.routeChat.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.RouteChat \
--set grpc.endpoints.routeChat.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/bidirectional.json

Parameters

Any field in the Config struct of the ghz runner package can be used as a parameter in this task. The JSON tags of the struct fields directly correspond to the names of the parameters of this task. In the usage example, the parameters host and call correspond to the Host and Call fields respectively in the Config struct.

In addition, the following fields are defined by this task.

Name	Type	Description
protoURL	string (URL)	URL where the protobuf file that defines the gRPC service is located.
dataURL	string (URL)	URL where JSON data to be used in call requests is located.
binaryDataURL	string (URL)	URL where binary data to be used in call requests is located.
metadataURL	string (URL)	URL where the JSON metadata data to be used in call requests is located.
warmupNumRequests	int	Number of requests to be sent in a warmup task (results are ignored).
warmupDuration	string	Duration of warmup task (results are ignored). Specified in the Go duration string format (example, 5s). If both warmupDuration and warmupNumRequests are specified, then warmupDuration is ignored.
endpoints	map[string]EndPoint	Used to specify multiple endpoints and their configuration. The string is the name of the endpoint and the EndPoint struct includes all the parameters described above as well as those from the Config struct. Load testing and metric collection will be conducted separately for each endpoint.

Precedence

Some parameters have a default value, which can be overwritten. In addition, with the endpoints parameter, you can test multiple endpoints and configure parameters for each of those endpoint. In these cases, the priority order is the default value, the value set at the base level, and the value set at the endpoint value.

In the following example, all three endpoints will use the default timeout of 20s (from Config struct).

iter8 k launch \
--set "tasks={grpc}" \
--set grpc.host=routeguide.default:50051 \
--set grpc.protoURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grpc/grpc-go/v1.52.0/examples/route_guide/routeguide/route_guide.proto \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.GetFeature \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/unary.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.ListFeatures \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/server.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.RecordRoute \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/client.json

In the following example, the getFeature and listFeatures endpoints will use the default timeout of 20s and the recordRoute endpoint will use a timeout of 30s.

iter8 k launch \
--set "tasks={grpc}" \
--set grpc.host=routeguide.default:50051 \
--set grpc.protoURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grpc/grpc-go/v1.52.0/examples/route_guide/routeguide/route_guide.proto \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.GetFeature \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/unary.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.ListFeatures \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/server.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.RecordRoute \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/client.json

In the following example, all three endpoints will use a qps of 40s.

iter8 k launch \
--set "tasks={grpc}" \
--set grpc.host=routeguide.default:50051 \
--set grpc.protoURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grpc/grpc-go/v1.52.0/examples/route_guide/routeguide/route_guide.proto \
--set grpc.timeout=40s \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.GetFeature \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/unary.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.ListFeatures \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/server.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.RecordRoute \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/client.json

In the following example, the getFeature and listFeatures endpoints will use a timeout of 40s and the listFeatures endpoint will use a timeout of 30s.

iter8 k launch \
--set "tasks={grpc}" \
--set grpc.host=routeguide.default:50051 \
--set grpc.protoURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grpc/grpc-go/v1.52.0/examples/route_guide/routeguide/route_guide.proto \
--set grpc.timeout=40s \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.GetFeature \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/unary.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.ListFeatures \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/server.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.timeout=30s \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.RecordRoute \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/client.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.timeout=30s

---

Further more, set parameters will trickle down to the endpoints.

iter8 k launch \
--set "tasks={grpc}" \
--set grpc.host=routeguide.default:50051 \
--set grpc.protoURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grpc/grpc-go/v1.52.0/examples/route_guide/routeguide/route_guide.proto \
--set grpc.skipFirst=5 \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.GetFeature \
--set grpc.endpoints.getFeature.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/unary.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.ListFeatures \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/server.json \
--set grpc.endpoints.listFeatures.timeout=30s \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.call=routeguide.RouteGuide.RecordRoute \
--set grpc.endpoints.recordRoute.dataURL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iter8-tools/docs/v0.13.13/samples/grpc-payload/client.json

In this example, all three endpoints will have a skipFirst of 5.

Grafana Dashboard

The results of the grpc task is visualized using the grpc Iter8 Grafana dashboard. The dashboard can be found here.

To use the dashboard:

1. Open Grafana in a browser.
2. Add a new data JSON API data source with the following parameters
   • URL: <link to Grafana service>/grpcDashboard
   • Query string: namespace=<namespace of experiment>&experiment=<name of experiment>
3. Import the grpc Iter8 Grafana dashboard
   • Copy and paste the contents of this link into the text box

You will see a visualization of the experiment like the following:

For multiple endpoints, the visualization will look like the following: