Retry Policy

This guide demonstrates how to configure retry policy for a client and server application within the service mesh.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes cluster running Kubernetes v1.19.0 or greater.
• Have kubectl available to interact with the API server.
• Have fsm CLI available for managing the service mesh.

Demo

1. Install FSM with permissive mode and retry policy enabled.

   fsm install --set=fsm.enablePermissiveTrafficPolicy=true --set=fsm.featureFlags.enableRetryPolicy=true
   

2. Deploy the httpbin service into the httpbin namespace after enrolling its namespace to the mesh. The httpbin service runs on port 14001.

   kubectl create namespace httpbin
   
   fsm namespace add httpbin
   
   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flomesh-io/fsm-docs/release/v1.2/manifests/samples/httpbin/httpbin.yaml -n httpbin
   

   Confirm the httpbin service and pods are up and running.

   kubectl get svc,pod -n httpbin
   

   Should look similar to below

   NAME      TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)     AGE
   httpbin   ClusterIP   10.96.198.23   <none>        14001/TCP   20s
   
   NAME                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   httpbin-5b8b94b9-lt2vs   2/2     Running   0          20s
   

3. Deploy the curl into the curl namespace after enrolling its namespace to the mesh.

   kubectl create namespace curl
   
   fsm namespace add curl
   
   kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flomesh-io/fsm-docs/release/v1.2/manifests/samples/curl/curl.yaml -n curl
   

   Confirm the curl pod is up and running.

   kubectl get pods -n curl
   

   Should look similar to below.

   NAME                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   curl-54ccc6954c-9rlvp   2/2     Running   0          20s
   

4. Apply the Retry policy to retry when the curl ServiceAccount receives a 5xx code when sending a request to httpbin Service.

   kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
   kind: Retry
   apiVersion: policy.flomesh.io/v1alpha1
   metadata:
     name: retry
     namespace: curl
   spec:
     source:
       kind: ServiceAccount
       name: curl
       namespace: curl
     destinations:
     - kind: Service
       name: httpbin
       namespace: httpbin
     retryPolicy:
       retryOn: "5xx"
       perTryTimeout: 1s
       numRetries: 5
       retryBackoffBaseInterval: 1s
   EOF
   

5. Send a HTTP request that returns status code 503 from the curl pod to the httpbin service.

   curl_client="$(kubectl get pod -n curl -l app=curl -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')"
   kubectl exec "$curl_client" -n curl -c curl -- curl -sI httpbin.httpbin.svc.cluster.local:14001/status/503
   

   Returned result might look like

   HTTP/1.1 503 SERVICE UNAVAILABLE
   server: gunicorn
   date: Tue, 14 Feb 2023 11:11:51 GMT
   content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
   access-control-allow-origin: *
   access-control-allow-credentials: true
   content-length: 0
   connection: keep-alive
   

6. Query for the stats between curl to httpbin.

   curl_client="$(kubectl get pod -n curl -l app=curl -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')"
   fsm proxy get stats -n curl "$curl_client" | grep upstream_rq_retry
   

   The number of times the request from the curl pod to the httpbin pod was retried using the exponential backoff retry should be equal to the numRetries field in the retry policy.

   The upstream_rq_retry_limit_exceeded stat shows the number of requests not retried because it’s more than the maximum retries allowed - numRetries.

   cluster.httpbin/httpbin|14001.upstream_rq_retry: 4
   cluster.httpbin/httpbin|14001.upstream_rq_retry_backoff_exponential: 4
   cluster.httpbin/httpbin|14001.upstream_rq_retry_backoff_ratelimited: 0
   cluster.httpbin/httpbin|14001.upstream_rq_retry_limit_exceeded: 1
   cluster.httpbin/httpbin|14001.upstream_rq_retry_overflow: 0
   cluster.httpbin/httpbin|14001.upstream_rq_retry_success: 0
   

7. Send a HTTP request that returns a non-5xx status code from the curl pod to the httpbin service.

   curl_client="$(kubectl get pod -n curl -l app=curl -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')"
   kubectl exec "$curl_client" -n curl -c curl -- curl -sI httpbin.httpbin.svc.cluster.local:14001/status/404
   

   Returned result might look something like

   HTTP/1.1 404 NOT FOUND
   server: gunicorn
   date: Tue, 14 Feb 2023 11:18:56 GMT
   content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
   access-control-allow-origin: *
   access-control-allow-credentials: true
   content-length: 0
   connection: keep-alive