Month: 2025-10. Focused on delivering key features for CI reliability and alignment with current deployment environments in the scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests repository.

September 2025 (2025-09) monthly summary for scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests: Delivered key version-management and performance improvements in the Scylla cluster tests by updating the default ScyllaDB version to 2025.3 in Manager pipelines, while preserving 2025.2 for Ubuntu-specific coverage. Aligned Scylla Manager backend references to 2025.3 and updated repository URLs for RHEL and Debian; updated unit tests to reflect the new backend address. Implemented schema restore optimization by conditionally restarting Scylla nodes only for versions 2024.1 and earlier, reducing restore time for newer versions. These changes improve CI stability, test coverage, and time-to-feedback for the 2025.3 release.

August 2025 | scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests Overview: Delivered targeted test infrastructure and configuration enhancements that improve benchmarking, reliability, and cloud deployment validation. The work advances performance visibility, upgrade readiness, and test resilience, enabling faster feedback and more robust CI for cloud deployments. Key features delivered: - 1-1 Restore Testing Enhancements: Added Argus benchmarking support with a new config parameter and a dedicated result class to report bootstrap and restore durations for analysis. - Staging Cloud Backup Snapshot Configuration: Introduced a backup snapshot configuration for the Staging Cloud environment (AWS BYOA single DC) with refined naming to distinguish QA vs Staging. - Manager Version and Test Infrastructure Update: Updated Scylla Manager tests to default to version 3.6.x, added upgrade-path testing, and aligned backend versions for cloud deployments. - Scylla YAML initial_token: Extended handling to accept string (comma-separated) token values in YAML configuration. - CI caching: Expanded caching workflow to include the Siren repository for SkipPerIssue testing and SCT integration (enhancing cache reuse across repos). Major bugs fixed: - Cloud startup errors in tests: Lowered the severity to warnings to allow retries and prevent test failures due to transient startup issues. - Keyspace name validation robustness: Management CLI tests replaced '~' with '_' to ensure valid identifiers are returned. Overall impact and accomplishments: - Improved test reliability and observability: Argus benchmarking provides actionable performance data for 1-1 restore scenarios; enhanced startup handling reduces flaky failures in cloud clusters. - Better upgrade readiness and cloud parity: Manager 3.6.x baseline with upgrade-path testing and backend alignment supports smoother upgrades and more realistic cloud deployments. - Expanded configuration flexibility: YAML improvements and enhanced backup snapshot configuration simplify test environments and enable clearer QA vs Staging separation. Technologies/skills demonstrated: - Benchmarking integration (Argus), YAML configuration parsing and token handling, CI/workflow enhancements (Sirentracking in caching), test infrastructure stabilization, and release-grade manager versioning and upgrade testing.

July 2025 monthly summary for scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests focused on delivering a refreshed CI Test Environment that exercises current releases and upgrade paths across Scylla, Manager, Monitor, and OS. The changes enhance test coverage, reliability, and compatibility with the 2025.x line, enabling earlier detection of upgrade-related regressions and ensuring tests remain representative of production configurations.

May 2025 milestone for scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests: Implemented cloud cluster support and unified cluster management, resulting in more reliable multi-cluster testing and easier maintenance. These changes enhance cloud compatibility, validation stability, and cross-repo consistency, delivering measurable business value for CI/test automation.

April 2025 — scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests: CI and test enhancements delivering upgrade validation, improved multi-DC stability, and cloud-focused testing; introduced IAM utilities. Expanded upgrade coverage to Manager 3.4.x and Scylla 2024.1/2024.2, added dynamic replication-factor logic for multi-DC repairs, corrected DC-mapping behavior in restore flows, and extended cloud restore/backup benchmarks across multiple cloud locations. AWS IAM utilities were introduced to manage policies and ARNs, enabling safer, scalable policy changes. These efforts reduce upgrade risk, improve cross-DC data integrity, and accelerate cloud-ready testing and release cycles.

Monthly summary for 2025-03 focused on reliability improvements in the CI/CD pipeline for the scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests repository, driven by a targeted fix to the Rocky9 manager installation test path after refactoring. Key features delivered: - CI/CD Pipeline: Fixed broken Rocky9 manager installation test path in the Jenkins pipeline to reference the updated test class name after refactor, ensuring the installation test runs as intended. Major bugs fixed: - Resolved a broken test path in the Jenkins CI/CD pipeline caused by a recent refactor; this prevents false negatives and stabilizes automated test results for the Rocky9 installation scenario. Commit: 9e1254407d68b3625aea7d3c73a2138a5d5f1c30. Overall impact and accomplishments: - Increased CI reliability for the cluster-tests suite, reducing flaky test outcomes and improving feedback speed to developers. - Enhanced confidence in automated deployments and test coverage for Rocky9 deployment paths. Technologies/skills demonstrated: - Jenkins-based CI/CD pipeline maintenance and debugging - Test automation and refactor compatibility handling - Git-based change tracking and traceability - Problem-solving in test pipeline contexts Top achievements: - Fixed Rocky9 manager installation test path in CI/CD pipeline to align with refactor - Updated test execution to reference the correct class name, preventing false negatives - Improved CI stability and faster feedback for installation tests - Demonstrated strong debugging, traceability, and collaboration to maintain test reliability

February 2025 for scylladb/scylla-cluster-tests focused on stabilizing multi-DC restore workflows, improving compatibility with legacy Scylla snapshots and cloud deployments, and hardening backup and test infrastructure. Delivered key capabilities and fixes that drive reliability in multi-DC deployments and safer CI feedback across cloud environments.

January 2025 monthly summary for scylla-cluster-tests efforts focused on stabilizing multi-DC tests, modernizing test infrastructure, and expanding encryption and reporting capabilities. Key changes delivered across two repositories include: stability fixes for multi-DC Nemesis disruption management, flexible Azure test infra with a Red Hat-based image, configurable snapshot backup workflows with improved reporting, and enhanced Scylla Manager cluster management and encryption testing. These changes reduce flaky CI, improve cloud-cluster support, and strengthen data-security testing while improving visibility to stakeholders.

December 2024 monthly summary: Delivered improvements across cross-region testing, cloud deployment reliability, configuration simplification, and CI/test infrastructure, with a clear focus on business value and stable release readiness.

November 2024 performance summary for scylladbbot/scylla-cluster-tests. Focused on aligning core management tooling with the latest Scylla release, expanding cross-distro coverage, and strengthening CI/CD reliability. Delivered safer upgrade flows, enhanced observability, and expanded test coverage for backups and Enterprise scenarios, resulting in faster feedback, reduced risk, and broader test fidelity across environments.

Month 2024-10: Focused on CI reliability for the scylladbbot/scylla-cluster-tests repository. Key work centered on stabilizing the test suite by conditionally skipping error message verification in test_enospc_before_restore when upstream issue scylladb/scylla-manager#4087 is present. This prevented false failures while upstream issues are resolved, reduced flaky test runs, and accelerated feedback for developers. No new user-facing features shipped this month; the primary business value was maintaining test health and enabling safer releases.