Define Custom Workloads: Tracks

Definition

A track describes one or more benchmarking scenarios. Its structure is described in detail in the track reference.

Example track

We will create the track “tutorial” step by step. We store everything in the directory ~/rally-tracks/tutorial but you can choose any other location.

First, get some data. Geonames provides geo data under a creative commons license. Download allCountries.zip (around 300MB), extract it and inspect allCountries.txt.

The file is tab-delimited but to bulk-index data with Elasticsearch we need JSON. Convert the data with the following script:

import json

cols = (("geonameid", "int", True),
        ("name", "string", True),
        ("asciiname", "string", False),
        ("alternatenames", "string", False),
        ("latitude", "double", True),
        ("longitude", "double", True),
        ("feature_class", "string", False),
        ("feature_code", "string", False),
        ("country_code", "string", True),
        ("cc2", "string", False),
        ("admin1_code", "string", False),
        ("admin2_code", "string", False),
        ("admin3_code", "string", False),
        ("admin4_code", "string", False),
        ("population", "long", True),
        ("elevation", "int", False),
        ("dem", "string", False),
        ("timezone", "string", False))


def main():
    with open("allCountries.txt", "rt", encoding="UTF-8") as f:
        for line in f:
            tup = line.strip().split("\t")
            record = {}
            for i in range(len(cols)):
                name, type, include = cols[i]
                if tup[i] != "" and include:
                    if type in ("int", "long"):
                        record[name] = int(tup[i])
                    elif type == "double":
                        record[name] = float(tup[i])
                    elif type == "string":
                        record[name] = tup[i]
            print(json.dumps(record, ensure_ascii=False))


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Store the script as toJSON.py in the tutorial directory (~/rally-tracks/tutorial). Invoke it with python3 toJSON.py > documents.json.

Then store the following mapping file as index.json in the tutorial directory:

{
  "settings": {
    "index.number_of_replicas": 0
  },
  "mappings": {
    "docs": {
      "dynamic": "strict",
      "properties": {
        "geonameid": {
          "type": "long"
        },
        "name": {
          "type": "text"
        },
        "latitude": {
          "type": "double"
        },
        "longitude": {
          "type": "double"
        },
        "country_code": {
          "type": "text"
        },
        "population": {
          "type": "long"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Note

This tutorial assumes that you want to benchmark a version of Elasticsearch prior to 7.0.0. If you want to benchmark Elasticsearch 7.0.0 or later you need to remove the mapping type above.

For details on the allowed syntax, see the Elasticsearch documentation on mappings and the create index API.

Finally, store the track as track.json in the tutorial directory:

{
  "version": 2,
  "description": "Tutorial benchmark for Rally",
  "indices": [
    {
      "name": "geonames",
      "body": "index.json",
      "types": [ "docs" ]
    }
  ],
  "corpora": [
    {
      "name": "rally-tutorial",
      "documents": [
        {
          "source-file": "documents.json",
          "document-count": 11658903,
          "uncompressed-bytes": 1544799789
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "schedule": [
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "delete-index"
      }
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "create-index"
      }
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "cluster-health",
        "request-params": {
          "wait_for_status": "green"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "bulk",
        "bulk-size": 5000
      },
      "warmup-time-period": 120,
      "clients": 8
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "force-merge"
      }
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "name": "query-match-all",
        "operation-type": "search",
        "body": {
          "query": {
            "match_all": {}
          }
        }
      },
      "clients": 8,
      "warmup-iterations": 1000,
      "iterations": 1000,
      "target-throughput": 100
    }
  ]
}

The numbers under the documents property are needed to verify integrity and provide progress reports. Determine the correct document count with wc -l documents.json and the size in bytes with stat -f "%z" documents.json.

Note

This tutorial assumes that you want to benchmark a version of Elasticsearch prior to 7.0.0. If you want to benchmark Elasticsearch 7.0.0 or later you need to remove the types property above.

Note

You can store any supporting scripts along with your track. However, you need to place them in a directory starting with “_”, e.g. “_support”. Rally loads track plugins (see below) from any directory but will ignore directories starting with “_”.

Note

We have defined a JSON schema for tracks which you can use to check how to define your track. You should also check the tracks provided by Rally for inspiration.

The new track appears when you run esrally list tracks --track-path=~/rally-tracks/tutorial:

dm@io:~ $ esrally list tracks --track-path=~/rally-tracks/tutorial

    ____        ____
   / __ \____ _/ / /_  __
  / /_/ / __ `/ / / / / /
 / _, _/ /_/ / / / /_/ /
/_/ |_|\__,_/_/_/\__, /
                /____/
Available tracks:

Name        Description                   Documents    Compressed Size  Uncompressed Size
----------  ----------------------------- -----------  ---------------  -----------------
tutorial    Tutorial benchmark for Rally      11658903  N/A              1.4 GB

Congratulations, you have created your first track! You can test it with esrally --distribution-version=6.0.0 --track-path=~/rally-tracks/tutorial.

Adding support for test mode

You can check your track very quickly for syntax errors when you invoke Rally with --test-mode. Rally postprocesses its internal track representation as follows:

  • Iteration-based tasks run at most one warmup iteration and one measurement iteration.
  • Time-period-based tasks run at most for 10 seconds without warmup.

Rally also postprocesses all data file names. Instead of documents.json, Rally expects documents-1k.json and assumes the file contains 1.000 documents. You need to prepare these data files though. Pick 1.000 documents for every data file in your track and store them in a file with the suffix -1k. We choose the first 1.000 with head -n 1000 documents.json > documents-1k.json.

Challenges

To specify different workloads in the same track you can use so-called challenges. Instead of specifying the schedule property on top-level you specify a challenges array:

{
  "version": 2,
  "description": "Tutorial benchmark for Rally",
  "indices": [
    {
      "name": "geonames",
      "body": "index.json",
      "types": [ "docs" ]
    }
  ],
  "corpora": [
    {
      "name": "rally-tutorial",
      "documents": [
        {
          "source-file": "documents.json",
          "document-count": 11658903,
          "uncompressed-bytes": 1544799789
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "challenges": [
    {
      "name": "index-and-query",
      "default": true,
      "schedule": [
        {
          "operation": {
            "operation-type": "delete-index"
          }
        },
        {
          "operation": {
            "operation-type": "create-index"
          }
        },
        {
          "operation": {
            "operation-type": "cluster-health",
            "request-params": {
              "wait_for_status": "green"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "operation": {
            "operation-type": "bulk",
            "bulk-size": 5000
          },
          "warmup-time-period": 120,
          "clients": 8
        },
        {
          "operation": {
            "operation-type": "force-merge"
          }
        },
        {
          "operation": {
            "name": "query-match-all",
            "operation-type": "search",
            "body": {
              "query": {
                "match_all": {}
              }
            }
          },
          "clients": 8,
          "warmup-iterations": 1000,
          "iterations": 1000,
          "target-throughput": 100
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Note

If you define multiple challenges, Rally runs the challenge where default is set to true. If you want to run a different challenge, provide the command line option --challenge=YOUR_CHALLENGE_NAME.

When should you use challenges? Challenges are useful when you want to run completely different workloads based on the same track but for the majority of cases you should get away without using challenges:

  • To run only a subset of the tasks, you can use task filtering, e.g. --include-tasks="create-index,bulk" will only run these two tasks in the track above.
  • To vary parameters, e.g. the number of clients, you can use track parameters

Structuring your track

track.json is the entry point to a track but you can split your track as you see fit. Suppose you want to add more challenges to the track but keep them in separate files. Create a challenges directory and store the following in challenges/index-and-query.json:

{
  "name": "index-and-query",
  "default": true,
  "schedule": [
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "delete-index"
      }
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "create-index"
      }
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "cluster-health",
        "request-params": {
          "wait_for_status": "green"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "bulk",
        "bulk-size": 5000
      },
      "warmup-time-period": 120,
      "clients": 8
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "operation-type": "force-merge"
      }
    },
    {
      "operation": {
        "name": "query-match-all",
        "operation-type": "search",
        "body": {
          "query": {
            "match_all": {}
          }
        }
      },
      "clients": 8,
      "warmup-iterations": 1000,
      "iterations": 1000,
      "target-throughput": 100
    }
  ]
}

Include the new file in track.json:

{
  "version": 2,
  "description": "Tutorial benchmark for Rally",
  "indices": [
    {
      "name": "geonames",
      "body": "index.json",
      "types": [ "docs" ]
    }
  ],
  "corpora": [
    {
      "name": "rally-tutorial",
      "documents": [
        {
          "source-file": "documents.json",
          "document-count": 11658903,
          "uncompressed-bytes": 1544799789
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "challenges": [
    {% include "challenges/index-and-query.json" %}
  ]
}

We replaced the challenge content with {% include "challenges/index-and-query.json" %} which tells Rally to include the challenge from the provided file. You can use include on arbitrary parts of your track.

To reuse operation definitions across challenges, you can define them in a separate operations block and refer to them by name in the corresponding challenge:

{
  "version": 2,
  "description": "Tutorial benchmark for Rally",
  "indices": [
    {
      "name": "geonames",
      "body": "index.json",
      "types": [ "docs" ]
    }
  ],
  "corpora": [
    {
      "name": "rally-tutorial",
      "documents": [
        {
          "source-file": "documents.json",
          "document-count": 11658903,
          "uncompressed-bytes": 1544799789
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "operations": [
    {
      "name": "delete",
      "operation-type": "delete-index"
    },
    {
      "name": "create",
      "operation-type": "create-index"
    },
    {
      "name": "wait-for-green",
      "operation-type": "cluster-health",
      "request-params": {
        "wait_for_status": "green"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "bulk-index",
      "operation-type": "bulk",
      "bulk-size": 5000
    },
    {
      "name": "force-merge",
      "operation-type": "force-merge"
    },
    {
      "name": "query-match-all",
      "operation-type": "search",
      "body": {
        "query": {
          "match_all": {}
        }
      }
    }
  ],
  "challenges": [
    {% include "challenges/index-and-query.json" %}
  ]
}

challenges/index-and-query.json then becomes:

{
  "name": "index-and-query",
  "default": true,
  "schedule": [
    {
      "operation": "delete"
    },
    {
      "operation": "create"
    },
    {
      "operation": "wait-for-green"
    },
    {
      "operation": "bulk-index",
      "warmup-time-period": 120,
      "clients": 8
    },
    {
      "operation": "force-merge"
    },
    {
      "operation": "query-match-all",
      "clients": 8,
      "warmup-iterations": 1000,
      "iterations": 1000,
      "target-throughput": 100
    }
  ]
}

Note how we reference to the operations by their name (e.g. create, bulk-index, force-merge or query-match-all).

You can also use Rally’s collect helper to simplify including multiple challenges:

{% import "rally.helpers" as rally %}
{
  "version": 2,
  "description": "Tutorial benchmark for Rally",
  "indices": [
    {
      "name": "geonames",
      "body": "index.json",
      "types": [ "docs" ]
    }
  ],
  "corpora": [
    {
      "name": "rally-tutorial",
      "documents": [
        {
          "source-file": "documents.json",
          "document-count": 11658903,
          "uncompressed-bytes": 1544799789
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "operations": [
    {
      "name": "delete",
      "operation-type": "delete-index"
    },
    {
      "name": "create",
      "operation-type": "create-index"
    },
    {
      "name": "wait-for-green",
      "operation-type": "cluster-health",
      "request-params": {
        "wait_for_status": "green"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "bulk-index",
      "operation-type": "bulk",
      "bulk-size": 5000
    },
    {
      "name": "force-merge",
      "operation-type": "force-merge"
    },
    {
      "name": "query-match-all",
      "operation-type": "search",
      "body": {
        "query": {
          "match_all": {}
        }
      }
    }
  ],
  "challenges": [
    {{ rally.collect(parts="challenges/*.json") }}
  ]
}

The changes are:

  1. We import helper functions from Rally by adding {% import "rally.helpers" as rally %} in line 1.
  2. We use Rally’s collect helper to find and include all JSON files in the challenges subdirectory with the statement {{ rally.collect(parts="challenges/*.json") }}.

Note

Rally’s log file contains the fully rendered track after it has loaded it successfully.

You can even use Jinja2 variables but then you need to import the Rally helpers a bit differently. You also need to declare all variables before the import statement:

{% set clients = 16 %}
{% import "rally.helpers" as rally with context %}

If you use this idiom you can refer to the clients variable inside your snippets with {{ clients }}.

Sharing your track with others

So far the track is only available on your local machine. To share your track you could check it into version control. To avoid committing the potentially huge data file you can expose it via http (e.g. via an S3 bucket) and reference it in your track with the property base-url. Rally expects that the URL points to the parent path and appends the document file name automatically.

You should also compress your document corpus to save network bandwidth; bzip2 works well. You can create a compressed archive with the following command:

bzip2 -9 -c documents.json > documents.json.bz2

If you want to support Rally’s test mode, also compress your test mode corpus with:

bzip2 -9 -c documents-1k.json > documents-1k.json.bz2

Then upload documents.json.bz2 and documents-1k.json.bz2 to the remote location.

Finally, specify the compressed file name in the source-file property and also add the base-url property:

{
  "version": 2,
  "description": "Tutorial benchmark for Rally",
  "corpora": [
    {
      "name": "rally-tutorial",
      "documents": [
        {
          "base-url": "http://benchmarks.elasticsearch.org.s3.amazonaws.com/corpora/geonames",
          "source-file": "documents.json.bz2",
          "document-count": 11658903,
          "compressed-bytes": 197857614,
          "uncompressed-bytes": 1544799789
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  ...
}

Specifying compressed-bytes (file size of documents.json.bz2) and uncompressed-bytes (file size of documents.json) is optional but helps Rally to provide progress indicators and also verify integrity.

You’ve now mastered the basics of track development for Rally. It’s time to pat yourself on the back before you dive into the advanced topics!

Advanced topics

Template Language

Rally uses Jinja2 as a template language so you can use Jinja2 expressions in track files.

Extensions

Rally also provides a few extensions to Jinja2:

  • now: a global variable that represents the current date and time when the template is evaluated by Rally.
  • days_ago(): a filter that you can use for date calculations.

You can find an example in the http_logs track:

{
  "name": "range",
    "index": "logs-*",
    "type": "type",
    "body": {
      "query": {
        "range": {
          "@timestamp": {
            "gte": "now-{{'15-05-1998' | days_ago(now)}}d/d",
            "lt": "now/d"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

The data set that is used in the http_logs track starts on 26-04-1998 but we want to ignore the first few days for this query, so we start on 15-05-1998. The expression {{'15-05-1998' | days_ago(now)}} yields the difference in days between now and the fixed start date and allows us to benchmark time range queries relative to now with a predetermined data set.

Custom parameter sources

Warning

Your parameter source is on a performance-critical code-path. Double-check with Rally’s profiling support that you did not introduce any bottlenecks.

Consider the following operation definition:

{
  "name": "term",
  "operation-type": "search",
  "body": {
    "query": {
      "term": {
        "body": "physician"
      }
    }
  }
}

This query is defined statically but if you want to vary parameters, for example to search also for “mechanic” or “nurse, you can write your own “parameter source” in Python.

First, define the name of your parameter source in the operation definition:

{
  "name": "term",
  "operation-type": "search",
  "param-source": "my-custom-term-param-source"
  "professions": ["mechanic", "physician", "nurse"]
}

Rally recognizes the parameter source and looks for a file track.py next to track.json. This file contains the implementation of the parameter source:

import random


def random_profession(track, params, **kwargs):
    # choose a suitable index: if there is only one defined for this track
    # choose that one, but let the user always override index and type.
    if len(track.indices) == 1:
        default_index = track.indices[0].name
        if len(track.indices[0].types) == 1:
            default_type = track.indices[0].types[0].name
        else:
            default_type = None
    else:
        default_index = "_all"
        default_type = None

    index_name = params.get("index", default_index)
    type_name = params.get("type", default_type)

    # you must provide all parameters that the runner expects
    return {
        "body": {
            "query": {
                "term": {
                    "body": "%s" % random.choice(params["professions"])
                }
            }
        },
        "index": index_name,
        "type": type_name,
        "cache": params.get("cache", False)
    }

def register(registry):
    registry.register_param_source("my-custom-term-param-source", random_profession)

The example above shows a simple case that is sufficient if the operation to which your parameter source is applied is idempotent and it does not matter whether two clients execute the same operation.

The function random_profession is the actual parameter source. Rally will bind the name “my-custom-term-param-source” to this function by calling register. register is called by Rally before the track is executed.

The parameter source function needs to declare the parameters track, params and **kwargs. track contains a structured representation of the current track and params contains all parameters that have been defined in the operation definition in track.json. We use it in the example to read the professions to choose. The third parameter is there to ensure a more stable API as Rally evolves.

We also derive an appropriate index and document type from the track’s index definitions but allow the user to override this choice with the index or type parameters:

{
  "name": "term",
  "operation-type": "search",
  "param-source": "my-custom-term-param-source"
  "professions": ["mechanic", "physician", "nurse"],
  "index": "employee*",
  "type": "docs"
}

If you need more control, you need to implement a class. Below is the implementation of the same parameter source as a class:

import random


class TermParamSource:
    def __init__(self, track, params, **kwargs):
        # choose a suitable index: if there is only one defined for this track
        # choose that one, but let the user always override index and type.
        if len(track.indices) == 1:
            default_index = track.indices[0].name
            if len(track.indices[0].types) == 1:
                default_type = track.indices[0].types[0].name
            else:
                default_type = None
        else:
            default_index = "_all"
            default_type = None

        # we can eagerly resolve these parameters already in the constructor...
        self._index_name = params.get("index", default_index)
        self._type_name = params.get("type", default_type)
        self._cache = params.get("cache", False)
        # ... but we need to resolve "profession" lazily on each invocation later
        self._params = params

    def partition(self, partition_index, total_partitions):
        return self

    def size(self):
        return 1

    def params(self):
        # you must provide all parameters that the runner expects
        return {
            "body": {
                "query": {
                    "term": {
                        "body": "%s" % random.choice(self._params["professions"])
                    }
                }
            },
            "index": self._index_name,
            "type": self._type_name,
            "cache": self._cache
        }


def register(registry):
    registry.register_param_source("my-custom-term-param-source", TermParamSource)

In register you bind the name in the track specification to your parameter source implementation class similar to the previous example. TermParamSource is the actual parameter source and needs to fulfill a few requirements:

  • The constructor needs to have the signature __init__(self, track, params, **kwargs).
  • partition(self, partition_index, total_partitions) is called by Rally to “assign” the parameter source across multiple clients. Typically you can just return self. If each client needs to act differently then you can provide different parameter source instances here as well.
  • size(self): This method helps Rally to provide a proper progress indication to users if you use a warmup time period. For bulk indexing, return the number of bulks (for a given client). As searches are typically executed with a pre-determined amount of iterations, just return 1 in this case.
  • params(self): This method returns a dictionary with all parameters that the corresponding “runner” expects. This method will be invoked once for every iteration during the race. In the example, we parameterize the query by randomly selecting a profession from a list.

For cases, where you want to provide a progress indication but cannot calculate size up-front (e.g. when you generate bulk requests on-the fly up to a certain total size), you can implement a property percent_completed which returns a floating point value between 0.0 and 1.0. Rally will query this value before each call to params() and uses it to indicate progress. However:

  • Rally will not check percent_completed if it can derive progress in any other way.
  • The value of percent_completed is purely informational and does not influence when Rally considers an operation to be completed.

Note

The method params(self) is called on a performance-critical path. Don’t do anything in this method that takes a lot of time (avoid any I/O). For searches, you should usually throttle throughput anyway and there it does not matter that much but if the corresponding operation is run without throughput throttling, double-check that your custom parameter source does not introduce a bottleneck.

Custom parameter sources can use the Python standard API but using any additional libraries is not supported.

You can also implement your parameter sources and runners in multiple Python files but the main entry point is always track.py. The root package name of your plugin is the name of your track.

Custom runners

Warning

Your runner is on a performance-critical code-path. Double-check with Rally’s profiling support that you did not introduce any bottlenecks.

Runners execute an operation against Elasticsearch. Rally supports many operations out of the box already, see the track reference for a complete list. If you want to call any other Elasticsearch API, define a custom runner.

Consider we want to use the percolate API with an older version of Elasticsearch which is not supported by Rally. To achieve this, we implement a custom runner in the following steps.

In track.json set the operation-type to “percolate” (you can choose this name freely):

{
  "name": "percolator_with_content_google",
  "operation-type": "percolate",
  "body": {
    "doc": {
      "body": "google"
    },
    "track_scores": true
  }
}

Then create a file track.py next to track.json and implement the following two functions:

def percolate(es, params):
    es.percolate(
        index="queries",
        doc_type="content",
        body=params["body"]
    )


def register(registry):
    registry.register_runner("percolate", percolate)

The function percolate is the actual runner and takes the following parameters:

  • es, is an instance of the Elasticsearch Python client
  • params is a dict of parameters provided by its corresponding parameter source. Treat this parameter as read-only.

This function can return:

  • Nothing at all. Then Rally will assume by default 1 and "ops" (see below).
  • A tuple of weight and a unit, which is usually 1 and "ops". If you run a bulk operation you might return the bulk size here, for example in number of documents or in MB. Then you’d return for example (5000, "docs") Rally will use these values to store throughput metrics.
  • A dict with arbitrary keys. If the dict contains the key weight it is assumed to be numeric and chosen as weight as defined above. The key unit is treated similarly. All other keys are added to the meta section of the corresponding service time and latency metrics records.

Similar to a parameter source you also need to bind the name of your operation type to the function within register.

If you need more control, you can also implement a runner class. The example above, implemented as a class looks as follows:

class PercolateRunner:
    def __call__(self, es, params):
        es.percolate(
            index="queries",
            doc_type="content",
            body=params["body"]
        )

    def __repr__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        return "percolate"

def register(registry):
    registry.register_runner("percolate", PercolateRunner())

The actual runner is implemented in the method __call__ and the same return value conventions apply as for functions. For debugging purposes you should also implement __repr__ and provide a human-readable name for your runner. Finally, you need to register your runner in the register function. Runners also support Python’s context manager interface. Rally uses a new context for each request. Implementing the context manager interface can be handy for cleanup of resources after executing an operation. Rally uses it, for example, to clear open scrolls.

If you have specified multiple Elasticsearch clusters using target-hosts you can make Rally pass a dictionary of client connections instead of one for the default cluster in the es parameter.

To achieve this you need to:

  • Use a runner class
  • Specify multi_cluster = True as a class attribute
  • Use any of the cluster names specified in target-hosts as a key for the es dict

Example (assuming Rally has been invoked specifying default and remote in target-hosts):

class CreateIndexInRemoteCluster:
    multi_cluster = True

    def __call__(self, es, params):
        es['remote'].indices.create(index='remote-index')

    def __repr__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        return "create-index-in-remote-cluster"

def register(registry):
    registry.register_runner("create-index-in-remote-cluster", CreateIndexInRemoteCluster())

Note

You need to implement register just once and register all parameter sources and runners there.

Custom schedulers

Warning

Your scheduler is on a performance-critical code-path. Double-check with Rally’s profiling support that you did not introduce any bottlenecks.

If you want to rate-limit execution of tasks, you can specify a target-throughput (in operations per second). For example, Rally attempts to run this term query 20 times per second:

{
  "operation": "term",
  "target-throughput": 20
}

By default, Rally uses a deterministic distribution to determine when to schedule the next operation. Hence it executes the term query at 0, 50ms, 100ms, 150ms and so on. The scheduler is also aware of the number of clients. Consider this example:

{
  "operation": "term",
  "target-throughput": 20,
  "clients": 4
}

If Rally would not take the number of clients into account and would still issue requests (from each of the four clients) at the same points in time (i.e. 0, 50ms, 100ms, 150ms, …), it would run at a target throughput of 4 * 20 = 80 operations per second. Hence, Rally will automatically reduce the rate at which each client will execute requests. Each client will issue requests at 0, 200ms, 400ms, 600ms, 800ms, 1000ms and so on. Each client issues five requests per second but as there are four of them, we still have a target throughput of 20 operations per second. You should keep this in mind, when writing your own custom schedules.

To create a custom scheduler, create a file track.py next to track.json and implement the following two functions:

import random

def random_schedule(current):
    return current + random.randint(10, 900) / 1000.0


def register(registry):
    registry.register_scheduler("my_random", random_schedule)

You can then use your custom scheduler as follows:

{
  "operation": "term",
  "schedule": "my_random"
}

The function random_schedule returns a floating point number which represents the next point in time when Rally should execute the given operation. This point in time is measured in seconds relative to the beginning of the execution of this task. The parameter current is the last return value of your function and is 0.0 for the first invocation. So, for example, this scheduler could return the following series: 0, 0.119, 0.622, 1.29, 1.343, 1.984, 2.233.

This implementation is usually not sufficient as it does not take into account the number of clients. Therefore, you typically want to implement a full-blown scheduler which can also take parameters. Below is an example for our random scheduler:

import random

class RandomScheduler:
    def __init__(self, params):
        # assume one client by default
        clients = params.get("clients", 1)
        # scale accordingly with the number of clients!
        self.lower_bound = clients * params.get("lower-bound-millis", 10)
        self.upper_bound = clients * params.get("upper-bound-millis", 900)

    def next(self, current):
        return current + random.randint(self.lower_bound, self.upper_bound) / 1000.0


def register(registry):
    registry.register_scheduler("my_random", RandomScheduler)

This implementation achieves the same rate independent of the number of clients. Additionally, we can pass the lower and upper bound for the random function from the track:

{
    "operation": "term",
    "schedule": "my_random",
    "clients": 4,
    "lower-bound-millis": 50,
    "upper-bound-millis": 250
}