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Cloud systems are increasingly being managed by operation programs termed operators, which automate tedious, human-based operations. Operators of modern management platforms like Kubernetes, Twine, and ECS implement declarative interfaces based on the state-reconciliation principle. An operation declares a desired system state and the operator automatically reconciles the system to that declared state. Operator correctness is critical, given the impacts on system operations—bugs in operator code put systems in undesired or error states, with severe consequences. However, validating operator correctness is challenging due to the enormous system-state space and complex operation interface. A correct operator must not only satisfy correctness properties of its own code, but it must also maintain managed systems in desired states. Unfortunately, end-to-end testing of operators significantly falls short. We present Acto, the first automatic end-to-end testing technique for cloud system operators. Acto uses a statecentric approach to test an operator together with a managed system. Acto continuously instructs an operator to reconcile a system to different states and checks if the system successfully reaches those desired states. Acto models operations as state transitions and systematically realizes state-transition sequences to exercise supported operations in different scenarios. Acto’s oracles automatically check whether a system’s state is as desired. To date, Acto has helped find 56 serious new bugs (42 were confirmed and 30 have been fixed) in eleven Kubernetes operators with few false alarms.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available October 23, 2024