Simulate HTTP faults

HTTPChaos experiments simulate the fault scenarios during the HTTP request and response processing. Currently, HTTPChaos supports simulating the following fault types:

• Abort: blocks requests and responses.
• Delay: injects latency into the request or response.
• Replace: replaces part of the content in HTTP request or response messages.
• Patch: adds additional content to the HTTP request or response messages.

HTTP faults support combining different fault types. If you have configured multiple HTTP fault types at the same time when creating HTTPChaos experiments, the order of injecting the faults follows abort -> delay -> replace -> patch. When the abort fault causes short circuits, the connection will be directly interrupted.

Before you start

Before injecting the faults supported by HTTPChaos, make sure the following requirements are met:

• There is no control manager of Chaos Mesh running on the target Pod.
• The rules affect both clients and servers in the Pod. If you want to affect only one of them, refer to the official specific side section.
• HTTPS access should be disabled because injecting HTTPS connections is not supported currently.
• To make HTTPChaos injection take effect, the client should avoid reusing TCP socket. This is because HTTPChaos does not affect the HTTP requests that are sent via TCP socket before the fault injection.
• Use non-idempotent requests (such as most of the POST requests) with caution in production environments. If such requests are used, the target service may not return to normal status by repeating requests after the fault injection.

Simulate fault injections by kbcli

This table below describes the general flags for HTTP faults.

📎 Table 1. kbcli fault network http flags description

Option	Description	Default value	Required
--target	It specifies whether the target of fault injection is Request or Response. The target-related fields should be configured at the same time.	Request	No
--port	It specifies the TCP port that the target service listens on.	80	No
--path	The URL path of the target request. Supports Matching wildcards.	*	No
--method	It specifies the HTTP method that the target requests.	GET	No
--code	It specifies the status code responded by the target. It is effective only when target=response.	0	No

Abort

The command below injects one-minute abort chaos to the specified Pod.

kbcli fault network http abort --duration=1m

Delay

The command below injects a 15-second latency chaos to the specified Pod.

kbcli fault network http delay --delay=15s

Replace

The command below replaces part of content in HTTP request or response messages for 1 minute.

kbcli fault network http replace --replace-method=PUT --duration=1m

Patch

The command below adds additional contents to HTTP request or response messages.

kbcli fault network http patch --body='{"key":""}' --type=JSON --duration=30s

Simulate fault injections by YAML file

This section introduces the YAML configuration file examples. You can view the YAML file by adding --dry-run at the end of the above kbcli commands. Meanwhile, you can also refer to the Chaos Mesh official docs for details.

HTTP-abort example

1. Write the experiment configuration to the http-abort.yaml file.

   In the following example, Chaos Mesh injects 1-minute abort chaos to the specified Pod for 1 minute.

   apiVersion: chaos-mesh.org/v1alpha1
   kind: HTTPChaos
   metadata:
     creationTimestamp: null
     generateName: http-chaos-
     namespace: default
   spec:
     abort: true
     duration: 1m
     method: GET
     mode: all
     path: '*'
     port: 80
     selector:
       namespaces:
       - default
     target: Request

2. Run kubectl to start an experiment.

   kubectl apply -f ./http-abort.yaml

HTTP-delay example

1. Write the experiment configuration to the http-delay.yaml file.

   In the following example, Chaos Mesh injects a 15-second latency chaos to the specified Pod.

   apiVersion: chaos-mesh.org/v1alpha1
   kind: HTTPChaos
   metadata:
     creationTimestamp: null
     generateName: http-chaos-
     namespace: default
   spec:
     delay: 15s
     duration: 10s
     method: GET
     mode: all
     path: '*'
     port: 80
     selector:
       namespaces:
       - default
     target: Request

2. Run kubectl to start an experiment.

   kubectl apply -f ./http-delay.yaml

HTTP-replace example

1. Write the experiment configuration to the http-replace.yaml file.

   In the following example, Chaos Mesh replaces part of content in HTTP request or response messages for 1 minute.

   apiVersion: chaos-mesh.org/v1alpha1
   kind: HTTPChaos
   metadata:
     creationTimestamp: null
     generateName: http-chaos-
     namespace: default
   spec:
     duration: 1m
     method: GET
     mode: all
     path: '*'
     port: 80
     replace:
       method: PUT
     selector:
       namespaces:
       - default
     target: Request

2. Run kubectl to start an experiment.

   kubectl apply -f ./http-replace.yaml

HTTP-patch example

1. Write the experiment configuration to the http-patch.yaml file.

   In the following example, Chaos Mesh adds additional contents to HTTP request or response messages.

   apiVersion: chaos-mesh.org/v1alpha1
   kind: HTTPChaos
   metadata:
     creationTimestamp: null
     generateName: http-chaos-
     namespace: default
   spec:
     duration: 30s
     method: GET
     mode: all
     patch:
       body:
         type: JSON
         value: '{"key":""}'
     path: '*'
     port: 80
     selector:
       namespaces:
       - default
     target: Request

2. Run kubectl to start an experiment.

   kubectl apply -f ./http-patch.yaml