HCE and LitmusChaos

Harness Chaos Engineering (HCE) is powered by the open source CNCF chaos engineering project LitmusChaos. HCE adds additional features to make the practice of chaos engineering for enterprises easy.

Go to HCE versus LitmusChaos for a quick comparison.

Common capabilities of HCE and LitmusChaos

Following are the common features between Litmus and HCE:

1. Scalable platform
2. Declarative chaos fault architecture
3. Kubernetes chaos faults
4. Chaos faults as CRDs
5. Chaos metrics
6. Chaos hubs
7. Chaos infrastructure architecture
8. Chaos experiments structure
9. Scheduling chaos experiments
10. Resilience probes

Additional capabilities of HCE

HCE module has the following additional capabilities:

1. Kubelet density chaos fault
2. VMware chaos faults
3. AWS chaos faults
4. GCP chaos faults
5. Azure chaos faults
6. Linux chaos faults
7. Windows chaos faults
8. Cloud Foundry chaos faults
9. Load chaos faults
10. SSH chaos faults
11. Kubernetes chaos faults
12. Teaming around ChaosHubs
13. Resilience probes (Dynatrace and Datadog)
14. ChaosGuard

Integrations with other Harness modules

In addition to the above features, HCE integrates with these Harness modules:

• Continuous Delivery (CD): Go to Use HCE with CD.
• Feature Flags (FF): Go to Use HCE with FF.
• Service Reliability Management: Go to Use HCE SRM.

HCE free plans

Harness offers a free hosted LitmusChaos if you are trying to get started with LitmusChaos or Chaos Engineering in general. The HCE free plan is a free-forever plan that has features equivalent to LitmusChaos, and also bundles Harness platform features such as RBAC and hosted logging— all for free.

Sign up at app.harness.io to get started with a free plan for either the hosted HCE or the hosted LitmusChaos.

important

The HCE free plan replaces cloud.chaosnative.com. New sign ups are not being accepted at cloud.chaosnative.com. Users on that platform are advised to move to the HCE free plan before August 31, 2023. For free support on migration, contact Harness Support.

HCE versus LitmusChaos

This section describes the differences between Harness Chaos Engineering (HCE) and the open-source CNCF incubation project, LitmusChaos.

Chaos management - Basic

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Centralized chaos portal	✅	✅
Chaos hubs	Public hub	Enterprise hub
Chaos metrics to Prometheus	✅	✅
YAML-based support for chaos experiments	✅	✅
Run chaos faults in parallel	✅	✅
Experiment control parameters through the tag in the UI	❌	✅
Event driven chaos injection	✅	✅ (via Harness webhooks)
Ability to halt all ongoing chaos experiments using the halt button	❌	✅
BYOC (Bring Your Own Chaos)	✅	✅

Chaos management - Advanced

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Chaos experiments CRUD	Partial	✅
Chaos experiments for multiple clusters	❌	✅ (GameDays and pipelines)
Run chaos experiments in parallel	❌	✅ (GameDays and pipelines)
Out-of-the-box chaos experiments	❌	✅
OOTB API templates for chaos experiments	❌	✅
Export chaos experiments to chaos hubs	❌	✅
Schedule chaos scenarios directly from a chaos hub	❌	✅
GameDay portal	❌	✅
ChaosGuard	❌	✅

Administration

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Rest/GraphQL APIs	✅	✅
Built-in user management and authentication	Basic	✅
Single Sign-On (SSO) with OAuth 2.0	❌	✅
Single Sign-On (SSO) with SAML	❌	✅
Provision users with Okta (SCM)	❌	✅
Provision Azure AD Users and Groups (SCIM)	❌	✅
Provision users and groups with OneLogin (SCIM)	❌	✅
Multiple projects	❌	✅
Multiple organisations	❌	✅

Security

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Two-factor authentication	❌	✅
RBAC (Role Based Access Control)- Built-in roles	Basic	✅
RBAC (Role Based Access Control)- Custom roles	❌	✅
Audit trail (2 year data retention)	❌	✅
Integrated secrets management with Harness Secrets Manager	❌	✅
IP Address whitelist management	❌	✅

Integrations

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Integration with Harness Continuous Deployment Pipelines	❌	✅
Integration with Jenkins Pipelines	❌	✅
Integration with GitLab Pipelines	❌	✅
Integration with Harness Continuous Verification	❌	✅
Integration with Harness Feature Flags	❌	✅
Integration with Service Reliability Management	❌	✅

Kubernetes pod-level chaos faults

Go to Pod faults for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Container kill	✅	✅
Disk fill	✅	✅
Pod API block kill	❌	✅
Pod API latency	❌	✅
Pod API modify body	❌	✅
Pod API modify header	❌	✅
Pod API status code	❌	✅
Pod autoscaler	✅	✅
Pod CPU hog exec	✅	✅
Pod CPU hog	✅	✅
Pod delete	✅	✅
Pod DNS error	✅	✅
Pod DNS spoof	✅	✅
Pod HTTP reset peer	✅	✅
Pod HTTP status code	✅	✅
Pod HTTP modify body	✅	✅
Pod HTTP modify header	✅	✅
Pod HTTP latency	✅	✅
Pod I/O attribute override	❌	✅
Pod I/O error	❌	✅
Pod I/O latency	❌	✅
Pod I/O stress	✅	✅
Pod memory hog exec	✅	✅
Pod memory hog	✅	✅
Pod network corruption	✅	✅
Pod network duplication	✅	✅
Pod network latency	✅	✅
Pod network loss	✅	✅
Pod network partition	✅	✅
Pod network rate limit	❌	✅
Time chaos	❌	✅

Kubernetes node-level chaos faults

Go to Node faults for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Kubelet service kill	✅	✅
Node drain	✅	✅
Node I/O stress	✅	✅
Node CPU hog	✅	✅
Node memory hog	✅	✅
Node restart	✅	✅
Node taint	✅	✅
Node network latency	❌	✅
Node network loss	❌	✅
Kubernetes stress - Kubelet density	❌	✅

AWS chaos faults

Go to Chaos faults for AWS for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
ALB AZ down	❌	✅
CLB AZ down	❌	✅
NLB AZ down	❌	✅
EBS loss by ID	✅	✅
EBS loss by tag	✅	✅
EC2 DNS chaos	❌	✅
EC2 instance stop by ID	✅	✅
EC2 instance stop by tag	✅	✅
AWS SSM chaos by ID	✅	✅
AWS SSM chaos by tag	✅	✅
EC2 network loss	❌	✅
EC2 process kill	❌	✅
EC2 stop by Id	❌	✅
EC2 stop by tag	❌	✅
EC2 network latency (Jitter/Abort)	❌	✅
EC2 CPU hog	❌	✅
EC2 memory hog	❌	✅
EC2 I/O stress	❌	✅
EC2 HTTP latency	❌	✅
EC2 HTTP modify body	❌	✅
EC2 HTTP modify header	❌	✅
EC2 HTTP reset peer	❌	✅
EC2 HTTP status code	❌	✅
EC2 I/O stress	❌	✅
RDS instance delete	❌	✅
RDS instance reboot	❌	✅
ECS instance kill	❌	✅
ECS instance stop	❌	✅
ECS task stop	❌	✅
ECS task scale	❌	✅
ECS invalid container image	❌	✅
ECS network restrict	❌	✅
ECS container network latency	❌	✅
ECS container network loss	❌	✅
ECS container volume detach	❌	✅
ECS agent stop	❌	✅
ECS container CPU hog	❌	✅
ECS container HTTP latency	❌	✅
ECS container HTTP modify body	❌	✅
ECS container HTTP reset peer	❌	✅
ECS container HTTP status code	❌	✅
ECS container memory hog	❌	✅
ECS container I/O stress	❌	✅
ECS Fargate CPU hog	❌	✅
ECS Fargate memory hog	❌	✅
ECS update container resource limit	❌	✅
ECS update container timeout	❌	✅
ECS update task role	❌	✅
Windows EC2 blackhole chaos	❌	✅
Windows EC2 CPU hog	❌	✅
Windows EC2 memory hog	❌	✅

AWS serverless chaos faults

Go to Chaos faults for AWS for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Lambda delete function concurrency	❌	✅
Lambda toggle event mapping state	❌	✅
Lambda delete event source mapping	❌	✅
Lambda update function memory	❌	✅
Lambda update function timeout	❌	✅
Lambda update role permission	❌	✅
Resource access restrict	❌	✅

GCP chaos faults

Go to Chaos faults for GCP for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
GCP disk loss	✅	✅
GCP disk loss by label	❌	✅
GCP VM instance stop	✅	✅
GCP VM instance stop by label	❌	✅
GCP VM service kill	❌	✅

Azure chaos faults

Got to Chaos faults for Azure for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Azure instance stop	✅	✅
Azure disk loss	✅	✅
Azure instance CPU hog	❌	✅
Azure instance memory hog	❌	✅
Azure instance I/O stress	❌	✅
Azure web app stop	❌	✅
Web app access restriction	❌	✅

VMware chaos faults

Go to Chaos faults for VMware for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
VMware VM power off	✅	✅
VMware CPU hog	❌	✅
VMware memory hog	❌	✅
VMware I/O stress	❌	✅
VMware DNS chaos	❌	✅
VMware host reboot	❌	✅
VMware HTTP latency	❌	✅
VMware HTTP reset peer	❌	✅
VMware HTTP modify response	❌	✅
VMware network loss	❌	✅
VMware network rate limit	❌	✅
VMware network latency	❌	✅
VMware process kill	❌	✅
VMware service stop	❌	✅
VMware Windows CPU hog	❌	✅
VMware Windows memory hog	❌	✅
VMware disk loss	❌	✅
VMware Windows blackhole chaos	❌	✅
VMware Windows disk stress	❌	✅
VMware Windows network corruption	❌	✅
VMware Windows network duplication	❌	✅
VMware Windows network latency	❌	✅
VMware Windows network loss	❌	✅
VMware Windows process kill	❌	✅
VMware Windows service stop	❌	✅
VMware Windows time chaos	❌	✅

ALFI for Springboot

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Latency	✅	✅
Multiple faults injection	❌	✅
Exceptions	❌	✅
Memory stress	❌	✅
CPU stress	❌	✅
App kill	❌	✅

Load chaos faults

Go to Chaos faults for load for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Locust loadgen	❌	✅

SSH chaos faults

Go to Chaos faults for SSH for more information.

Feature	Litmus	CE (SaaS)
SSH chaos	❌	✅

Linux chaos faults

Go to Chaos faults for Linux for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Linux CPU stress	❌	✅
Linux disk fill	❌	✅
Linux disk I/O stress	❌	✅
Linux DNS error	❌	✅
Linux DNS spoof	❌	✅
Linux memory stress	❌	✅
Linux network corruption	❌	✅
Linux network duplication	❌	✅
Linux network latency	❌	✅
Linux network loss	❌	✅
Linux network rate limit	❌	✅
Linux process kill	❌	✅
Linux service restart	❌	✅
Linux time chaos	❌	✅

Windows chaos faults

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
Windows CPU stress	❌	✅
Windows memory stress	❌	✅
Windows network blackhole chaos	❌	✅

Cloud Foundry chaos faults

Go to Chaos faults for Linux for more information.

Feature	Litmus	HCE (SaaS)
CF app container kill	❌	✅
CF app network corruption	❌	✅
CF app network duplication	❌	✅
CF app network latency	❌	✅
CF app network loss	❌	✅
CF app route unmap	❌	✅
CF app stop	❌	✅