1220157 - Increase VRAM size for Linux VMs (mm-ub-*) and templates in qa.scl3.mozilla.com

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Infrastructure & Operations :: Virtualization, task)

Description

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Via bug 1220152 we want to increase the screen resolution of our Linux VMs due to test failures happening with lower screen resolution. As of now we have 1024x768 in use. So I would like to bump it to 1280x960.

Sadly this doesn't work because for all Linux VMs we only have 4MB of VRAM assigned in vSphere. But we need the following:

1280 * 960 * 4 / 1024 = 4800kB

Checking the Windows VMs those have 16MB VRAM set, so why cannot we also bump the VRAM of the Linux VMS and templates at the same value?

Comment 1

[Chris Knowles [:cknowles]]

Alright, we've looked at things, and agree with both the cause of the problem, and your suggested fix.  

We're currently looking to make changed to the templates.  Sadly, it needs an outage to make the changes to the already deployed VMs.  So either we're going to need a window to do it in, or you should be able to do it, and we're happy to give you the green light to go to 16MB on the mm-ub* vms.

So, just let us know if you'd like us to do it, and if so, when we can do it.  

Looking at VMware docs, it seems that the assumption (and it's not a *bad* assumption) is that you'd only be running a text console with linux, so why would you need more video RAM by default?

Comment 2

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

(In reply to Chris Knowles [:cknowles] from comment #1)
> We're currently looking to make changed to the templates.  Sadly, it needs
> an outage to make the changes to the already deployed VMs.  So either we're
> going to need a window to do it in, or you should be able to do it, and
> we're happy to give you the green light to go to 16MB on the mm-ub* vms.
> 
> So, just let us know if you'd like us to do it, and if so, when we can do
> it.  

It would be good if you can do it. First we should start with the two Ubuntu nodes in staging which are mm-ub-1404-(32/64). When you come online we can coordinate the offtime on IRC.

> Looking at VMware docs, it seems that the assumption (and it's not a *bad*
> assumption) is that you'd only be running a text console with linux, so why
> would you need more video RAM by default?

Well, those machines exist to run ui tests for Firefox. And with its last releases more and more buttons have been added by default to the toolbar. All that makes Firefox not behave well enough on a low resolution like 1024x768 anymore. We filed bug 1061193 to get this fixed for Firefox but so far no action happened here. 

I think it would also make sense to give the ESX docs another audit. Lots has been changed and maybe we missed something to update, even I try to do my best.

Comment 3

[Chris Knowles [:cknowles]]

Sure, I'll ping in a bit about coordination.

Which docs in specific do you feel need an audit? (as from an initial thought, we don't much mention vram - as your usage is pretty much an edge case for us.)  But asking here in case there was something else you had concerns with.

Comment 4

[Chris Knowles [:cknowles]]

per IRC, did mm-ub-1404-{32,64}.qa.scl3 staging boxes.  Will wait for test results and poke the remainder as directed.

Comment 5

[Chris Knowles [:cknowles]]

And did the rest after a little testing.  

all mm-ub-* vms have been upgraded to 16MB Video RAM.

Let us know if you need anything else.

Comment 6

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Thanks again for doing it so quickly. All fine on our side now.