Mistral Configuration Guide

Mistral configuration is needed for getting Mistral work correctly either with real OpenStack environment or without OpenStack environment.

NOTE: Most of the following operations should be performed in mistral directory.

  1. Generate mistral.conf (if it does not already exist):

    $ oslo-config-generator \
      --config-file tools/config/config-generator.mistral.conf \
      --output-file /etc/mistral/mistral.conf
    
  2. Edit file /etc/mistral/mistral.conf.

  3. If you are not using OpenStack, skip this item. Provide valid keystone auth properties:

    [keystone_authtoken]
    www_authenticate_uri = http://keystone1.example.com:5000/v3
    identity_uri = http://<keystone-host:5000
    auth_version = v3
    admin_user = <user>
    admin_password = <password>
    admin_tenant_name = <tenant>
    
  4. Mistral can be also configured to authenticate with Keycloak server via OpenID Connect protocol. In order to enable Keycloak authentication, the following section should be in the config file:

    auth_type = keycloak-oidc
    
    [keycloak_oidc]
    auth_url = https://<keycloak-server-host>:<keycloak-server-port>/auth
    

    Property auth_type is assigned to keystone by default. If SSL/TLS verification needs to be disabled then insecure = True should also be added under [keycloak_oidc] group.

  5. If you want to configure SSL for Mistral API server, provide following options in config file:

    [api]
    enable_ssl_api = True
    
    [ssl]
    ca_file = <path-to-ca file>
    cert_file = <path-to-certificate file>
    key_file = <path-to-key file>
    
  6. If you don’t use OpenStack or you want to disable authentication for the Mistral service, provide auth_enable = False in the config file:

    [pecan]
    auth_enable = False
    
  7. If you are not using OpenStack, skip this item. Register Mistral service and Mistral endpoints on Keystone:

    $ MISTRAL_URL="http://[host]:[port]/v2"
    $ openstack service create workflowv2 --name mistral \
      --description 'OpenStack Workflow service'
    $ openstack endpoint create workflowv2 public $MISTRAL_URL
    $ openstack endpoint create workflowv2 internal $MISTRAL_URL
    $ openstack endpoint create workflowv2 admin $MISTRAL_URL
    
  8. Configure transport properties in the [DEFAULT] section:

    [DEFAULT]
    transport_url = rabbit://<user_id>:<password>@<host>:5672/
    
  9. Configure database. SQLite can’t be used in production; use MySQL or PostgreSQL instead. Here are the steps how to connect MySQL DB to Mistral:

    Make sure you have installed mysql-server package on your database machine (it can be your Mistral machine as well).

    Install MySQL driver for python:

    $ pip install PyMySQL
    

    Create the database and grant privileges:

    # mysql
    
    CREATE DATABASE mistral;
    USE mistral
    GRANT ALL ON mistral.* TO 'root'@<database-host> IDENTIFIED BY <password>;
    

    Configure connection in Mistral config:

    [database]
    connection = mysql+pymysql://<user>:<password>@<database-host>:3306/mistral
    

    NOTE: If PostgreSQL is used, configure connection item as below:

    connection = postgresql://<user>:<password>@<database-host>:5432/mistral
    
  10. If you are not using OpenStack, skip this item. Update mistral/actions/openstack/mapping.json file which contains all allowed OpenStack actions, according to the specific client versions of OpenStack projects in your deployment. Please find more detailed information in tools/get_action_list.py script.

  11. Configure Task affinity feature if needed. It is needed for distinguishing either single task executor or one task executor from group of task executors:

    [executor]
    host = my_favorite_executor
    

    Then, this executor can be referred in Workflow Language by

    ...Workflow YAML...
    my_task:
      ...
      target: my_favorite_executor
    ...Workflow YAML...
    
  12. Configure role based access policies for Mistral endpoints (policy.json):

    [oslo_policy]
    policy_file = <path-of-policy.json file>
    

    Default policy.json file is in mistral/etc/. For more details see policy.json file.

  13. Modify the action execution reporting configuration if needed.

    It is possible that actions stuck in “RUNNING” state, for example if the assigned executor dies or the message that signals the completion of the action is lost. This section describes a heartbeat based solution to close these forgotten action executions. The related configuration options are max_missed_heartbeats and check_interval. Note that if either of these options are “0” then the feature won’t be enabled.

    The default configuration is the following:

    [action_heartbeat]
    max_missed_heartbeats = 15
    check_interval = 20
    first_heartbeat_timeout = 3600
    

    “check_interval = 20”, so check action executions every 20 seconds. When the checker runs it will transit all running action executions to error if the last heartbeat received is older than “20 * 15” seconds. Note that “first_heartbeat_timeout = 3600”, so the action execution won’t be closed for 3600 seconds if no heartbeat was received for it.

    • max_missed_heartbeats

    Defines the maximum amount of missed heartbeats to be allowed. If the number of missed heartbeats exceeds this number, then the related action execution will be transited to “ERROR” state with cause “Heartbeat wasn’t received.”.

    • check_interval

    The interval between checks (in seconds).

    • first_heartbeat_timeout

    The grace period for the first heartbeat (in seconds).

  14. Configure event publishers. Event publishers are plugins that are optionally installed in the same virtual environment as Mistral. Event notification can be configured for all workflow execution for one or more event publishers. The configuration is under the notify param at the notifier section. The notify param is a list of dictionaries, one for each publisher identifying the type or the registered plugin name and additional key value pairs to be passed as kwargs into the publisher:

    [notifier]
    notify = [ {"type": "webhook", "url": "http://example.com", "headers": {"X-Auth-Token": "XXXX"}}, {"type": "custom_publisher"} ]
    
  15. Finally, try to run mistral engine and verify that it is running without any error:

    $ mistral-server --config-file <path-to-config> --server engine