October 2025 performance engineering for scylla-cluster-tests: Highlights include migration of the performance regression testing infrastructure to v17, stabilizing CI pipelines, enhancing HDR-based analysis, and improving reporting robustness. Legacy branches (v15/v16) and outdated test configurations were removed to streamline upgrades. The work reduces test flakiness, accelerates feedback, and improves measurement accuracy across Scylla releases.

In September 2025, I focused on stabilizing the performance testing infrastructure and enhancing test reliability for scylla-cluster-tests. Key improvements included tightening measurement hygiene, removing legacy CI elements, and hardening HDR histogram processing to reduce flakiness. These changes delivered more trustworthy performance signals, easier maintenance, and better alignment with downstream performance goals.

August 2025 — Scylla Cluster Tests: drove substantial improvements to performance testing, reliability, and maintainability of the test suite. Key outcomes include migrating performance testing infrastructure to the v17 branch with new pipelines and branch-scoped test jobs, relocating core tests (vnodes rolling upgrade, elasticity, microbenchmark, RBNO) to the v17 infra, and enabling on-demand execution across all performance tests for faster feedback. Modernized the upgrade workflow by moving upgrade with tablets to the v17 branch. Delivered a suite of critical bug fixes across tablet operations, test parameterization, health checks, CQL connections, and test readiness, improving CI determinism and reducing flaky runs. Expanded test coverage and observability with new unit tests (exclusive connection) and enhanced log visibility in decorator tests. Demonstrated strong proficiency in CI/CD, test automation, performance engineering, and cross-repo collaboration, delivering measurable business value through faster, more reliable test cycles and easier maintenance.

July 2025 monthly summary for scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests: Delivered a robust overhaul of the performance regression testing pipeline and advanced rack-aware testing capabilities, driving reliability, speed, and reproducibility of performance assessments across regions. The changes included a Jenkins-based pipeline supporting cross-region parallel execution, refined test triggers, and throughput tuning to accommodate diverse deployment environments. Achieved AMI naming consistency across master:latest subtests by propagating a stable image list and AMI IDs to all subtests. Implemented rack-aware enhancements in Python driver tests and nemesis validation tooling to verify behavior under rack-aware scenarios. Result: faster, more deterministic test feedback, reduced flaky runs, and improved environment consistency for performance qualification ahead of releases.

June 2025 monthly summary for scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests focusing on key accomplishments, reliability improvements, and technical achievements across performance and test orchestration. The month delivered: per-throttle step thread configuration for gradual load testing, stabilized performance thresholds across architectures with CI updates, rack-aware test orchestration and policy validation, and a reliability fix for AWS instance discovery during node addition.

Monthly summary for 2025-05 focusing on the scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests repo work. Highlights include delivering Rust-based performance testing, stabilizing performance benchmarks, improving error handling for test results analysis, and introducing structured logging with schema log isolation to enhance traceability and data download efficiency.

April 2025 performance-oriented enhancements to the scylla-cluster-tests suite delivering faster feedback, improved stability during upgrades, and stronger test coverage. Key features delivered: - Perf Regression Tests: Configurations and Environment Updates – Consolidated perf regression test configurations and environment changes to reduce latency test durations, updated P99 thresholds for tablet/vnode tests, disabled P90 validation to prevent flaky failures, updated cassandra-stress image/version, and aligned prepared-loaders usage. - Perf Regression Testing Automation and Pipelines – Introduced Jenkins SCT Performance Regression pipeline and daily short-performance test triggers activated with each new AMI to ensure timely feedback on stability. Major bugs fixed: - Perf Regression Tests Reliability and Upgrade Fixes – Fixes to improve reliability during upgrades and triggers, including correct repository in rolling upgrades, daily trigger XML fix, disabling cluster health validator in some YAML test cases, and a cosmetic typo in the performance sanity trigger. Overall impact and accomplishments: - Faster feedback loops for performance regressions, leading to earlier detection of regressions and issues before release. - Increased reliability of upgrade-related tests and reduced flaky results, contributing to smoother releases. - Improved test coverage and alignment with current stack (Cassandra-stress image/version 3.17.5) and loader configurations, enabling more representative performance validation. Technologies/skills demonstrated: - CI/CD and test automation (Jenkins pipelines, triggers), Dockerized test environments, YAML test configurations, versioned test assets, and performance metrics tuning (P99 thresholds, load configurations). Business value: - Reduced test cycle times, faster feedback to developers, and more predictable release quality through robust performance validation and reliable upgrade testing.

March 2025 performance summary for scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests: Delivered key features to improve startup performance, added rack-aware testing configurations and validator for more deterministic load coordination, and updated the Elasticity Loader to run with latest ScyllaDB using Docker. Fixed robustness issue in perf_simple_query when no extra command is provided. These workstreams collectively reduce startup latency in large clusters, tighten validation for rack-aware policies, and improve test accuracy for performance regressions.

February 2025 (2025-02) monthly summary for scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests focusing on reliability, compatibility, and performance validation. Key outcomes include stability fixes, compatibility workarounds, and test infrastructure improvements across Kubernetes, AWS EKS, and Scylla versions.

January 2025 focused on stabilizing and accelerating performance regression testing across the Scylla cluster test suites. Delivered consolidated and enhanced performance test configuration in CI, removed timeouts by trimming long-running steps, and aligned tests with master:latest to ensure reliable baselines. Fixed critical pipeline parsing bug and Argus rack reporting bug, enabling more reliable test results, faster feedback loops, and improved diagnostics. Demonstrated strong CI automation, test orchestration, and data-driven tuning across multiple commits.

December 2024 performance summary for Scylla cluster tests. Focused on stabilizing test infrastructure, improving observability, and increasing reproducibility across both development and enterprise testing scenarios. Delivered robust log collection and schema handling, enhanced test coverage for latency and rack-aware policies, and improved HDR logging reliability, contributing to higher test stability and clearer diagnostics in Kubernetes environments.

November 2024 performance summary for scylladbbot/scylla-cluster-tests. Delivered automated performance-test pipelines for Scylla Enterprise, stabilized gradual throughput tests and real-loader scenarios, and enhanced test observability. Fixes to parallel test execution improved stability for AddRemoveDc nemesis. Overall, these contributions reduced feedback loops, improved reliability of performance benchmarks, and strengthened capacity-planning insights.