canonical/multipass

Bulk operations - Ability to perform actions on multiple nodes

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#2,404 opened on Jan 22, 2022

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enhancementgood first issuehelp wanted

Description

What are you trying to do? Currently all commands use instance name to perform operations. This makes operations on multiple instances difficult and requires individual commands/action on each instance. For example: if I have 3 VMs for apps, 2 vms for db, and I want to run a command on just db nodes, I would have to run two commands. Or If I have to reboot app servers, thats 3 commands.

What's your proposed solution? One option is to allow adding tags/lables to hosts. While launching we can add add these tags in commands line.

multipass launch --name app-server1 -m2g -c1 -d10g --tags group=app-server
multipass launch --name app-server2 -m2g -c1 -d10g --tags group=app-server
multipass launch --name app-server3 -m2g -c1 -d10g --tags group=app-server

Then for any operations we can specify the tag, instead of instance name.

multipass stop --tags group=app-server
multipass exec --tags group-app-server exec systemctl daemon-reload
multipass start --tags grou=app-server

Additionally, if we can expose these tags to the VM environment (file, metadata, etc.), we can make use of them in config management tool like Chef/Puppet/Script/Cloud-init, etc.

Additional context I made a small utility for multi-node microk8s cluster yogendra/mnmk8s (terrible name, i know), that does something similar, in absence of this feature.

Contributor guide

Tech stack
None
Domain
infrastructurecli
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
C++ knowledgeCLI development experienceUnderstanding of VM lifecycle
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
30
Research direction
Investigate the current instance identification mechanism in the codebase (e.g., how commands like `stop`, `exec`, `start` resolve instance names). Propose a design for adding tags to instance creation (e.g., adding a ` tags` flag to `launch`). Modify the underlying data structures to store tags. Update commands to accept ` tags` as an alternative to instance names. Consider exposing tags to the VM environment for config management. Review linked utility [yogendra/mnmk8s](https://github.com/yogendra/mnmk8s) for inspiration.
Bulk operations - Ability to perform actions on multiple nodes · canonical/multipass#2404 | Good First Issue