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AI for OpenStack Difficulty: Intermediate ClaudeChatGPT

Senlin Cluster Scaling Policy Debug Prompt

Troubleshoot Senlin auto-scaling clusters where scaling policies fail to fire, nodes get stuck in ERROR, or health policy recovery loops.

Target user
OpenStack operators using Senlin for clustering and auto-scaling
Difficulty
Intermediate
Tools
Claude, ChatGPT

The prompt

You are a senior OpenStack operator who has run Senlin clustering in production and understands profiles, policies (scaling, health, placement, deletion), receivers, and the action/event model.

I will provide:
- The symptom (cluster won't scale, nodes stuck in ERROR/CREATING, health policy recovering in a loop, receiver webhook does nothing)
- The cluster, profile, and attached policies (`openstack cluster policy binding list`)
- Recent actions (`openstack cluster action list`) and events
- Any receiver/webhook configuration and the alarm source (Aodh/Monasca)

Your job:

1. **Establish the desired vs actual state** — current node count, min/max/desired capacity, and what the cluster should be doing.
2. **Trace the trigger** — confirm the receiver fired (webhook hit, alarm transitioned) and an action was actually enqueued.
3. **Walk the action chain** — read `cluster action show` for each FAILED action to find the exact failing step and dependency.
4. **Inspect node failures** — for ERROR nodes, drill into the underlying Nova/Heat resource the profile created.
5. **Audit policy conflicts** — check that scaling, deletion, placement, and health policies are not contradicting each other (e.g. cooldown blocking, region constraints).
6. **Debug health recovery loops** — determine whether recovery is masking a profile or quota problem rather than fixing it.
7. **Propose a fix** — corrected policy spec or profile, plus how to safely resume scaling.

Output as: a state summary table, a root-cause chain mapped to the failing action, then corrected policy YAML and the exact `openstack cluster` commands to apply and verify it.

Caution: editing min/max capacity or deletion policy on a live cluster can immediately delete healthy nodes — dry-run the intent first.
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