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ci: policy evaluation benchmark block publishing to the Lens trend store - #13901

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ci: policy evaluation benchmark block publishing to the Lens trend store#13901
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Description

Sixth of the stack for CORE-13316, stacked on #13900; review the last commit only.

Adds a Semaphore block, Policy evaluation benchmark, that runs the engine (K1, BenchmarkEvaluateComposite and BenchmarkEvaluateVerdictCache in app-policy/checker) and collector (K2, BenchmarkCollectorPolicyEval in felix/collector) benchmarks of the pending-policy evaluation on the policyscale reference set whenever app-policy, felix/collector or hack/perf change, and in the scheduled builds, and publishes one hack/perf document per case to the Lens trend store through send-perf-results. Same shape as the nftables dataplane benchmark block (#45): trend tracking so that a regression in the evaluation path shows up as a step on a graph, not a per-PR gate.

  • hack/perf/perfdoc is the producer side of the hack/perf contract for Go benchmarks: Start/Finish measure the timed loop (wall ns, bytes, allocs per op) and write <dir>/<family>/<name>.json when the artifacts directory is set; nothing happens when it is not, which is the default outside CI.
  • Both benchmarks write documents under POLICY_EVAL_PERF_ARTIFACTS_DIR with the scenario scalars (case, direction, cached, scale, ns/flow, flows/s, hit ratio). make bench-policy-eval in app-policy and felix runs them in go-build with the variable set to artifacts/perf.
  • hack/perf/index-templates/benchmark_data_policy_eval.json pins the field types for the new family.
  • .semaphore/semaphore.yml and .semaphore/semaphore-scheduled-builds.yml are regenerated from the block.

Testing

POLICY_EVAL_PERF_ARTIFACTS_DIR=/tmp/perf go test ./app-policy/checker/ -run '^$' -bench 'BenchmarkEvaluate(Composite|VerdictCache)' -benchmem -benchtime 3x -cpu 1
POLICY_EVAL_PERF_ARTIFACTS_DIR=/tmp/perf go test ./felix/collector/  -run '^$' -bench BenchmarkCollectorPolicyEval -benchmem -benchtime 3x -cpu 1
find /tmp/perf -type f      # 13 documents, one per case
go run ./hack/cmd/deps generate-semaphore-yamls   # regenerated both pipelines; the dry run before the block was added produced no diff
make -n -C app-policy bench-policy-eval           # target expands as intended

The block itself has not run in CI yet (it will on this PR, since it changes app-policy and hack/perf). Lens credentials come from the same banzai-secrets secret the nftables block uses.

Release note:

None

AI assistance: Written with Claude Code (Claude Fable 5.1); the author reviewed the diff and ran the commands above.

By opening this PR you take responsibility for every line in it, and you agree to explain the change yourself during review rather than routing review comments back through an agent. See AI_POLICY.md.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

…benchmarks

Lift the two synthetic policy sets out of the checker benchmarks into a
package that renders the same set three ways: a policystore.PolicyStore
and endpoint for engine and collector benchmarks, the ToDataplane updates
that load it through ProcessUpdate, and Calico resources (Tier,
GlobalNetworkPolicy, GlobalNetworkSet) for applying it to a cluster. A
number measured at the engine, in the collector and on a node then
describes the same policy set.

The fixture also carries an oracle: Fixture.Expect computes the trace the
engine must report for a flow from the generator's own model of each rule,
independently of the matching code, and MatchingFlow / DeniedFlow /
Sampler produce flows aimed at chosen depths of the walk or following a
flow model (miss fraction, repeat fraction). Later changes to the engine
(compiled policies, a verdict cache, evaluation off the collector's main
loop) are gated on differential tests built on these.

Composite applies both measured shapes to one endpoint: 19,992 ingress
rules, 18,662 egress rules, 7,571 IP sets. BenchmarkEvaluateComposite
measures it in the three cases that matter for the collector; the two
existing benchmarks keep their cases and their numbers.

hack/cmd/policyscale renders a preset as YAML, or prints sampled flows
with their expected verdicts, for node-level runs.

Tracking: CORE-13316.
…yscale oracle

Run Evaluate over a corpus drawn from each policyscale preset (the denied
flow, flows aimed at every 257th rule, sampled flows following a flow
model, and replays as UDP, with an invalid protocol and with nil
addresses) and require the trace to equal the one the fixture's oracle
computes from its own model of the rules, in both policy scopes. The
harness takes two evaluators, so a second implementation of the walk
(compiled policies, a verdict cache, evaluation on another goroutine) is
checked against Evaluate the same way before it is switched on.

The named cases cover what a generated corpus cannot reach: nil
addresses against positive and negated references, named and negated
named ports, IP+port sets, negated and missing sets, protocols out of
range, by name, by number and negated, staged policies in both scopes,
HTTP criteria against an L4 flow, Log rules, Pass into the next tier and
into profiles, and a policy missing from the store. runNamedCases takes
an evaluator for the same reason.

Tracking: CORE-13316.
…neration

A verdict is a function of the endpoint's applicable rules, the store's
IP sets and the flow. For a flow with no L7 attributes (every flow the
collector evaluates) the criteria in match() reduce to protocol, source
and destination address, destination port and, only where a rule looks
at it, source port; identity and HTTP criteria match such a flow
whatever the rule says. So a store can remember the verdict for that
key and answer a flow that repeats an earlier flow's endpoints on a new
source port without walking the policy set, which on a large policy
set is the difference between a millisecond and a map lookup.

PolicyStore gains a Generation that ProcessUpdate moves on every update
but InSync, and an optional VerdictCache bound to it: entries are valid
for one generation and the cache starts over when the store moves on,
so a cached verdict never outlives the policies, IP sets or endpoints it
was computed from. Whether the source port is part of the key is decided
once per endpoint, scope, direction and generation by walking the
endpoint's applicable rules. The cache is bounded and starts over when
full. Evaluate consults it when the store has one; failed evaluations
are not cached; flows carrying identity or HTTP attributes (Dikastes
requests) and flows with a nil address bypass it.

The collector gets the cache through a PolicyStoreManager option so that
every store the manager creates, including on reconnect, carries one,
and reports it as felix_collector_policy_eval_cache_{hits,misses,resets,
evictions}_total. FlowLogsPolicyEvaluationCacheSize sizes it (default
65536; 0 disables). It is a config-file / environment-variable parameter
with no FelixConfiguration field yet, so that it picks to release
branches without an API change; the field can follow on master.

On the composite reference set (18,662 egress rules) with the sampler's
flow model, per evaluation: 1.00 ms uncached; 0.72 ms cached with no
deliberate repeats (11% hit ratio from coincidental ones), 0.31 ms at a
50% repeat rate (62% hits), 0.08 ms at 90% (92% hits).

Tests: the differential corpus and the named cases through a cached
store, twice, against an uncached one; invalidation on IP set delta,
policy update and policy removal through ProcessUpdate; source-port
keying; L7 and nil-address bypass; generation, capacity and option
behaviour in policystore; collector wiring.

Tracking: CORE-13316.
…uation

BenchmarkCollectorPolicyEval drives a real collector, wired for
evaluation only (a lookups cache that knows one local workload, a policy
store loaded with the policyscale composite set and that workload's
endpoint, no readers, no reporters, main loop not running), with
conntrack updates for flows drawn from the sampler's model, and
measures the two paths on the collector's main goroutine: handleCtInfo
for a new tuple, which creates the Data and evaluates it inline, and one
full re-evaluation sweep over a fixed live population. Each reports
ns/flow, the flow rate one goroutine could sustain at that cost, and the
verdict cache's hit ratio when caching.

This is the K2 level of the benchmark definition in
felix/design/flow-logs-policy-evaluation.md: the number that says
whether the collector, not just the engine, meets the per-node target.

On one laptop core, 200 new flows per case:

  NewFlow/Egress/Uncached    1.24 ms per flow     ~800 flows/s
  NewFlow/Ingress/Uncached   0.82 ms per flow    ~1,200 flows/s
  NewFlow/Egress/Cached      0.38 ms per flow    ~2,600 flows/s  (59% hits)
  NewFlow/Ingress/Cached     0.09 ms per flow   ~10,700 flows/s  (93% hits)
  Sweep/Uncached             1.04 ms per live flow
  Sweep/Cached               0.48 us per live flow (a sweep over an
                             unchanged store is all hits)

Tracking: CORE-13316.
The design doc for the user-mode policy evaluation the flow-log
collector runs for pending (staged) policy verdicts: the two evaluation
paths and the invariants they keep, the performance target and the
three-level benchmark (engine, collector, node) that defines it, the
correctness gates every new evaluator runs through, the verdict cache,
the planned off-main-loop evaluation and sweep invalidation, the
backport-first constraints, and the failure modes a reviewer should
look for. Indexed from felix/DESIGN.md; the collector as a whole stays
with the flow-logs-collector sub-design.

Tracking: CORE-13316.
A Semaphore block that runs the engine (K1) and collector (K2)
benchmarks of the pending-policy evaluation on the policyscale
reference set whenever app-policy, felix/collector or hack/perf change,
and in the scheduled builds, and publishes one hack/perf document per
case to the Lens trend store through send-perf-results, as the nftables
dataplane benchmark does. Trend tracking, not a per-PR gate.

hack/perf/perfdoc is the producer side of the hack/perf contract for Go
benchmarks: a Recorder measures the timed loop (wall ns, bytes and
allocs per op) and writes <dir>/<family>/<name>.json when the artifacts
directory is set. Both benchmarks use it under
POLICY_EVAL_PERF_ARTIFACTS_DIR; make bench-policy-eval in app-policy and
felix runs them in go-build with the variable set. The
benchmark_data_policy_eval index template pins the field types.

Tracking: CORE-13316.
@dimitri-nicolo dimitri-nicolo added docs-not-required Docs not required for this change release-note-not-required Change has no user-facing impact labels Sep 12, 2026
@marvin-tigera marvin-tigera added this to the Calico v3.34.0 milestone Sep 12, 2026
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github-actions Bot commented Sep 12, 2026

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CI triage — Calico

Recommendation: Dig deeper before merging

Likely caused by this PR

Test Why
Application Layer Policy: CI golangci-lint failed during make ci static checks in app-policy
Tools (hack directory): CI golangci-lint failed during make ci static checks in hack

workflow_id: 12e3e554-ef1f-41de-bd67-bbb098be617d

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