tree 35db3d92ac0e634251689d7cc308134ce2b8a261
parent 42382a7026d7d2b7e626bfcfdafd63d63961d6e6
author James E. Blair <jeblair@redhat.com> 1517522388 -0800
committer James E. Blair <jeblair@redhat.com> 1517600209 -0800

Executor: Don't start too many jobs at once

The metrics that we use to govern load on the executors are all
trailing indicators.  The executors are capable of accepting a
large number of jobs in a batch and then, only after they begin
to run, will the load indicators increase.  To avoid the thundering
herd problem, reduce the rate at which we accept jobs past a certain
point.

That point is twice the number of jobs as the target load average.
In practice that seems to be a fairly conservative but reasonable
number of jobs for the executor to run, so, to facilitate a quick
start, allow the executor to start up to that number all at once.

Once the number of jobs running is beyond that number, subsequent
jobs will only be accepted one at a time, after each one completes
its startup phase (cloning repos, establishing ansible connections),
which is to say, at the point where the job begins running its first
pre-playbook.

We will also wait until the next regular interval of the governor
to accept the next job.  That's currently 30 seconds, but to make
the system a bit more responsive, it's lowered to 10 seconds in this
change.

To summarize: after a bunch[1] of jobs are running, after each new
job, we wait until that job has started running playbooks, plus up
to an additional 10 seconds, before accepting a new job.

This is implemented by adding a 'starting jobs' metric to the governor
so that we register or de-register the execute function based on
whether too many jobs are in the startup phase.  We add a forced
call to the governor routine after each job starts so that we can
unregister if necessary before picking up the next job, and wrap that
routine in a lock since it is now called from multiple threads and
its logic may not be entirely thread-safe.

Also, add tests for all three inputs to manageLoad.

[1] 2*target load average

Change-Id: I066bc539e70eb475ca2b871fb90644264d8d5bf4