Policies¶

Policies allows users to enforce different rules regarding action executions.

To list the types of policy that are available, run: st2 policy-type list.

Policy configuration files should be stored in the policies folder in their respective packs, similar to actions and rules. Policies can be loaded into StackStorm via st2ctl reload --register-policies. Once policies are loaded into StackStorm, run the command st2 policy list to view the list of policies in effect.

Concurrency¶

The concurrency policy enforces the number of executions that can run simultaneously for a specified action.

By default when a threshold is reached, action execution is delayed until the number of concurrent executions of a particular actions falls below the threshold. As an alternative, users can specify that new executions are canceled, rather than delayed.

There are two forms of concurrency policy: action.concurrency and action.concurrency.attr.

action.concurrency¶

The action.concurrency policy limits the concurrent executions for the action. The following is an example of a policy file with concurrency defined for demo.my_action. Please note that the resource_ref and policy_type are the fully qualified name for the action and policy type respectively. The threshold parameter defines how many concurrent instances are allowed.

In this example, no more than 10 instances of demo.my_action can be run simultaneously. Any execution requests above this threshold will be postponed.

name: my_action.concurrency
description: Limits the concurrent executions for my action.
enabled: true
resource_ref: demo.my_action
policy_type: action.concurrency
parameters:
    action: delay
    threshold: 10

If you want further actions to be canceled instead of delayed, action attribute should be changed to cancel as shown below.

 name: my_action.concurrency
 description: Limits the concurrent executions for my action.
 enabled: true
 resource_ref: demo.my_action
 policy_type: action.concurrency
 parameters:
     action: cancel
     threshold: 1

action.concurrency.attr¶

The action.concurrency.attr policy limits the executions for the action by input arguments. Let’s say demo.my_remote_action has an input argument called hostname. This is the name of the host where the remote command or script runs. By using the policy type action.concurrency.attr and specifying hostname as one of the attributes in the policy, we can limit the number of concurrent demo.my_remote_action actions running for a given remote host.

 name: my_remote_action.concurrency
 description: Limits the concurrent executions for my action.
 enabled: true
 resource_ref: demo.my_remote_action
 policy_type: action.concurrency.attr
 parameters:
     action: delay
     threshold: 10
     attributes:
         - hostname

Note

The concurrency policy type is not enabled by default and requires a backend coordination service such as ZooKeeper or Redis to work.

If you have installed a coordination service in your network, you need to configure StackStorm to connect to that backend service. This is done in the coordination section of /etc/st2/st2.conf.

The following are examples for ZooKeeper and Redis:

ZooKeeper:

[coordination]
url = kazoo://username:password@host:port

Redis:

[coordination]
url = redis://:password@host:port

Other supported coordination backends include:

consul
etcd
MySQL
PostgreSQL
file (for testing when all the services are running on a single host)

StackStorm utilizes the OpenStack Tooz library for communicating with the coordination backend. The coordination backend must support the Locking functionality as defined by the Tooz interface. Please refrence the OpenStack Tooz compatability page for more information what interfaces are implemented by various backends.

For the full list of the supported backends and how to configure them, please visit OpenStack Tooz documentation.

Some of these coordination backends also require corresponding client libraries to be installed in StackStorm virtualenv. We do not ship these libraries by default. As an example, to install the client library in StackStorm virtualenv, run:

sudo su

# Example when using redis backend
/opt/stackstorm/st2/bin/pip install redis

# Example when using consul backend
/opt/stackstorm/st2/bin/pip install consul

Retry¶

Retry policy (action.retry) allows you to automatically retry (re-run) an action when a particular failure condition is met. Right now we support retrying actions which have failed or timed out.

The example below shows how to automatically retry the core.http action up to two times if it times out:

---
name: http.retry
description: Retry core.http action on timeout.
enabled: true
resource_ref: core.http
policy_type: action.retry
parameters:
    retry_on: timeout
    max_retry_count: 2
    delay: 2

Keep in mind that retrying an execution results in a new execution which shares all the attributes from the retried execution (parameters, context, etc).

Maximum value of the delay parameter is 120 seconds. Keep in mind that right now, retry functionality is not st2notifier service restart safe. This means if there are any pending executions to be retried and st2notifier is restarted, those executions will be lost.