How long does it take to rackconnect a newly built cloud server

Update:
There is a more comprehensive comparison and listing of available resources for the topic:
Rackconnect load and performance tests

Rackconnect is a Rackspace cloud product that allows you to create a secure environment where  cloud servers can communicate with your dedicated hardware and vice versa. In the current version of Rackconnect and Rackspace tools you can observe and monitor the progress in Myrackspace portal. It gives you a good visibility what task need to be done and what the progress is. This article describes this this a little better: How to check or monitor build status of a cloud server that belong to a RackConnect cloud account

Problem

After a cloud server is fully created and built how long does it take on average to execute all the Rackconnect tasks?

Analysis

In my attempt to answer the question I wrote a python script [1]. The script is capable of doing a lot more than what is described below (for more info please take a look at the github [1] and other blog entries here). With the help of this script I repetitively run a simple test, collect data and summarized it here.

All test has been performed on a Rackconnect account using Cisco ASA 5505 and core cloud account.

Test case for Rackconnect build

• Using the cloud API create a cloud server. 
• Using a pooling mechanism every 30 seconds send a 'check' API request to confirm if the cloud built is complete.
• Once the cloud is built use a pooling again and ever 20 seconds try to verify if all Rackconnect tasks are completed against the cloud server.
• Generate summary and report.

Starting a test

$ for i in $(seq 1 7); do 
  python -u firstgen_cs_performance.py -v -t 1 -s 1 -b pass@bastion_ip -u user -k key run 2>&1 | tee log.$(date +%s).txt
done

The test will generate a log file for each test. These simple bash aliases will help you to parse the data [2].

Example output from the test

[ ][ ] Preparing to start all 1 tests
[ ][ ] test nr 1 started at 2012-08-23 22:45:23.631241
[ 1][  ] starting test nr 1, creating 1 cloud server, please wait ...
[ 1][ 1] created image: {'flavor': 1, 'image': 112, 'name': 'csperform1345758323'}
[ 1][ 1] cloud server build [csperform1345758323] created in 214.059273 seconds / 3.56765455 minutes
[ 1][ 1] rackconnect build [csperform1345758323] finished in 46.875914 seconds / 0.781265233333 minutes
[ ][ ] test nr 1 finished at 2012-08-23 22:49:50.318006

[ ][ ] Preparing to start all 1 tests
[ ][ ] test nr 1 started at 2012-08-23 22:49:51.105979
[ 1][  ] starting test nr 1, creating 1 cloud server, please wait ...
[ 1][ 1] created image: {'flavor': 1, 'image': 112, 'name': 'csperform1345758591'}
[ 1][ 1] cloud server build [csperform1345758591] created in 213.882997 seconds / 3.56471661667 minutes
[ 1][ 1] rackconnect build [csperform1345758591] finished in 41.747438 seconds / 0.695790633333 minutes
[ ][ ] test nr 1 finished at 2012-08-23 22:54:14.590053

[ ][ ] Preparing to start all 1 tests
[ ][ ] test nr 1 started at 2012-08-23 22:54:15.326702
[ 1][  ] starting test nr 1, creating 1 cloud server, please wait ...
[ 1][ 1] created image: {'flavor': 1, 'image': 112, 'name': 'csperform1345758855'}
[ 1][ 1] cloud server build [csperform1345758855] created in 213.884405 seconds / 3.56474008333 minutes
[ 1][ 1] rackconnect build [csperform1345758855] ERROR, couldn't find server or timeout after 1008.921862 seconds / 16.8153643667 minutes
[ ][ ] test nr 1 finished at 2012-08-23 23:14:39.879807

[ ][ ] Preparing to start all 1 tests
[ ][ ] test nr 1 started at 2012-08-23 23:33:54.517918
[ 1][  ] starting test nr 1, creating 1 cloud server, please wait ...
[ 1][ 1] created image: {'flavor': 1, 'image': 112, 'name': 'csperform1345761234'}
[ 1][ 1] cloud server build [csperform1345761234] created in 214.204459 seconds / 3.57007431667 minutes
[ 1][ 1] rackconnect build [csperform1345761234] finished in 13.489741 seconds / 0.224829016667 minutes
[ ][ ] test nr 1 finished at 2012-08-23 23:37:53.865203

[ ][ ] Preparing to start all 1 tests
[ ][ ] test nr 1 started at 2012-08-23 23:37:54.768286
[ 1][  ] starting test nr 1, creating 1 cloud server, please wait ...
[ 1][ 1] created image: {'flavor': 1, 'image': 112, 'name': 'csperform1345761474'}
[ 1][ 1] cloud server build [csperform1345761474] created in 213.867189 seconds / 3.56445315 minutes
[ 1][ 1] rackconnect build [csperform1345761474] finished in 41.842998 seconds / 0.6973833 minutes
[ ][ ] test nr 1 finished at 2012-08-23 23:42:18.215062

[ ][ ] Preparing to start all 1 tests
[ ][ ] test nr 1 started at 2012-08-23 23:47:07.441398
[ 1][  ] starting test nr 1, creating 1 cloud server, please wait ...
[ 1][ 1] created image: {'flavor': 1, 'image': 112, 'name': 'csperform1345762027'}
[ 1][ 1] cloud server build [csperform1345762027] created in 214.401686 seconds / 3.57336143333 minutes
[ 1][ 1] rackconnect build [csperform1345762027] finished in 88.597479 seconds / 1.47662465 minutes
[ ][ ] test nr 1 finished at 2012-08-23 23:52:16.013129

Results discussion

Firstly all the information about how long it took to build a cloud server or Rackconnect it have a measurement error appropriately of 30 or 20 seconds. But even with this relatively big numbers we can clearly see a pattern that:

1. It is possible to Rackconnect a server in 13s (*) 
2. Many Rackconnect builds were finished in about 41-46s
3. In extreme case a cloud server build finished in 3,5 minute but the Rackconnect was still ongoing after 16min.

Add1.
This value is acceptable and correct even though the mesurement error for rackconnect task is 20s. The reason is that the script  firstgen_cs_performance.py uses different threads to perform various tasks. The 20s is simply a delay between the API calls performed by a single thread. For more info please take a look at the evaluate_rackconnect_status(self, test_nr) function.

References

1. https://github.com/rtomaszewski/cloud-performance/blob/master/firstgen_cs_performance.py
2. https://github.com/rtomaszewski/cloud-performance/blob/master/myaliases.sh