News/Phasing out the .wmflabs domain

From Wikitech

Cloud VPS instances created on or after 2020-09-08 will stop using the .eqiad.wmflabs domain, and be found only under .eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud.

What's changing

  • New instances in Cloud VPS projects will get one DNS entry named <host>.<project>.eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud.
  • IP addresses assigned to instances in Cloud VPS projects will continue to have one reverse DNS entry returning <host>.<project>.eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud.
  • New instances will be configured to treat <host>.<project>.eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud as their canonical name.

In order to avoid breaking existing systems, these changes will NOT be applied retroactively to existing instances. Old DNS entries will live on until the instance is deleted and should be largely harmless.

Timeline

  • Yes Done 2020-02-18: Start creating <host>.<project>.eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud hostnames for Cloud VPS instances
  • Yes Done 2020-08-19: Announced deprecation of <host>.<project>.eqiad.wmflabs and <host>.eqiad.wmflabs hostnames
  • Yes Done 2020-09-08: Stop creating legacy <host>.<project>.eqiad.wmflabs and <host>.eqiad.wmflabs hostnames for new Cloud VPS instances

More information

From 2020-02-18 to 2020-09-08, Cloud VPS instances had a hybrid hostnaming system:

  • New instances were given three different DNS entries:
    • <host>.<project>.eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud
    • <host>.<project>.eqiad.wmflabs
    • <host>.eqiad.wmflabs
  • Reverse DNS lookups of instance IP addresses returned hostnames of <host>.<project>.eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud
  • Instances themselves believed (for example via hostname -f) that they were canonically named <host>.<project>.eqiad.wmflabs

This hybrid system was originally implemented to maintain backwards compatibility as the domain name changes rolled out across the Cloud VPS infrastructure and projects. In the interest of simplifying, standardizing, and eliminating another use of the term 'labs', the Cloud VPS admin team started this project to phase out the use of the wmflabs domain name.

Frequently asked questions

Renaming existing instances

If you find yourself rewriting code in order to deal with instances under both domains (due to the change in hostname -f behavior), adjusting an old instance to identify as part of <project>.eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud only requires a simple change to /etc/hosts. The Cloud VPS admin team can assist in this type of renaming.

What about *.svc.eqiad.wmflabs?

A number of services, notably the Wiki replicas, use "service names" under the domain svc.eqiad.wmflabs. These names are not being replaced with equivalent names under svc.eqiad1.wikimedia.cloud at this time. These names will change in the future, but there are some other projects underway in the Cloud Services environment which need to progress further before changing our legacy service names.

See also