Host parameters

When Plumage processes your configuration template into an actual PGL file for Polygraph to use, it combined variables from two sources:

• Run parameters, which are provided in the form when starting the run
• Host parameters, which are loaded from the install-time settings of the Client in use

Host parameters allow you to avoid hard-coding machine-specific information, like the IP addresses of the Polygraph clients and servers, into the configuration. You can see this in use in the example configurations. They assume a host configuration which looks like this:

"host_parameters": {
    "host_client_ips": [
        "10.80.1.3",
        "10.80.1.4",
        "10.80.1.6",
        "10.80.1.7",
        "10.80.1.8",
        "10.80.1.9",
        "10.80.1.0",
        "10.80.1.10"
    ],
    "host_server_ip": "10.80.2.2",
    "host_server_name": "agent00.plumage.testing"
}

You may also wish to break out server IPs and names to arrays if you plan to use many server addresses.

Host parameters and run parameters cannot have the same names. If they do, Plumage will refuse to start the run to avoid confusing results. Therefore you should consider prefixing your host parameters with a suitable namespace, like host_.

Be careful about changing host parameters after you've started running tests. Plumage considers them an implementation detail of your configuration, so won't record them on the UI (although it will archive away the filled-in PGL file, as does the Polygraph report). If a parameter is an experimental variable of your testing, it should probably be a run parameter.