Policy
Aperture's policy language enables expression of closed-loop control systems in a declarative manner. Aperture includes pre-packaged blueprints that can be used both as a guide for creating new policies, or used as-is.
Policies provide a framework for defining and managing reliability criteria and conditions. They allow service operators to define and enforce reliability policies programmatically, running in a continuous control loop. In an application reliability context, policies codify the capability of the application to modify its operational state to achieve the best possible mode of operation despite overload and failures.
Aperture's control loop policies are programmable "circuits" that are evaluated periodically. One of the primary goals of these policies is to calculate the deviation from objectives and apply countermeasures, such as load throttling and workload queuing, to keep the system in a safe operational zone. The policies are used to express where the metrics are collected from and where the actuation happens, along with signal processing needed to perform corrective actions from health metrics. For example, a policy can be written to detect overload build-up at an upstream service and trigger load throttling at a downstream service.
The policy specification consists of two parts:
- A Circuit that expresses the Control System as an execution graph.
- A list of Resources which are required to support the circuit.
Circuit
A circuit in Aperture's policy language represents the signal processing circuit of the control system as an execution graph. It captures the process of evaluating the system's current state and describes the actions to be taken based on that evaluation. A circuit is made up of nodes, which represent the various components of the control system, including signal processing components, and edges, which represent the flow of signals between the nodes.
Observability-driven control is an important aspect of Aperture's policy language. By monitoring signals such as request latency, error rate, and saturation, Aperture's circuits can detect deviations from service-level objectives and trigger appropriate actions to restore system stability and reliability. The circuit is the heart of the policy specification and is responsible for the logic of the control system.
Resources
The resources section in the Policy describes resources needed to set up a circuit. It's possible but not recommended to share resources across Policies since resources are always defined in the global scope. Resources can be referenced inside the Circuit, the exact reference mechanism depends on the type of Resource.
Examples:
- Flux Meters: The metrics generated by Flux Meter can be referenced inside PromQL Components
- Flow Classifiers: The labels generated by Classifiers can be referred inside Selectors.