Testnet Manager

The Testnet manager (helm chart) lets you dynamically control test networks via a simple UI or API. It gives you a single pane of glass to list, inspect and interact with the nodes (full nodes, validators and parachain collators) running in a given Kubernetes namespace.

Rococo Example View

List Parachains

rococo-parachains

List Parachain Collators

rococo-collators-1002

Inspect Validator Node

rococo-validator-a-node-0

Usage

Requirements

The testnet manager requires the chain Sudo seed phrase to perform management functions. Also, some chain specific variables should be defined in a configmap, this can be added to the values.yaml:

configmap:
  WS_ENDPOINT: "ws://rococo-alice-node-0.rococo:9944"
  NODE_HTTP_PATTERN: "http://NODE_NAME.rococo:9933"
  NODE_WS_PATTERN: "ws://NODE_NAME.rococo:9944"
  HEALTHY_MIN_PEER_COUNT: "1"
  LOG_LEVEL: DEBUG

secret:
  SUDO_SEED: "0xe5be9a5092b81bca64be81d212e7f2f9eba183bb7a90954f7b76361f6edb5c0a" # Alice
  VALIDATORS_ROOT_SEED: "test test test test test test test test test test test test"

Then install the testnet manager and port forward a connection using the output of helm install ...:

helm repo add parity https://paritytech.github.io/helm-charts/
helm repo update
helm install testnet-mgr parity/testnet-manager --values values.yaml

Frontend GUI

In the nodes section you can view all running nodes, their roles, chain, uptime, CLI arguments, and you can also view logs.

testnet-mgr-frontend

Interact with API via Frontend

It's possible to view the API calls and execute them via the GUI. The main functions are:

Viewing nodes, validators, collators and parachains
Registering / deregistering validators and collators
Onboarding / off-boarding parachains
Rotating session keys

testnet-mgr-api

Examples

curl -X 'POST' \
  'http://localhost:8080/api/register_validators?statefulset=rococo-val-pool' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -d ''

Onboard Parachain id 1000:

curl -X 'POST' \
'http://localhost:8080/api/onboard_parachain/1000' \
-H 'accept: application/json' \
-d ''

How does it work ?

The testnet-manager is deployed in the same Kubernetes namespaces as nodes deployed with the node helm-chart. As node pods deployed with the chart are tagged with the appropriate labels (e.g. chain name, para ID), the manager is able to query the Kubernetes API and list the running nodes for each network (relay-chain, parachains).

By combining this list of nodes with the on-chain state retrieved from RPC endpoints (e.g. list of active validators accounts), the manager can automate node key setup (by interacting directly with each node RPC endpoint) and registration (by submitting sudo extrinsics). Behind the scenes, it uses a derivation formula for generating deterministic Validator/Collator accounts addresses: "${VALIDATORS_ROOT_SEED}//${node-name}".

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