Blog: add post about chaos testing and Yash Agarwal

content/blog/lfx-chaos-testing-yash-agarwal/index.md

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+---
+title: "Chaos testing the CloudNativePG project"
+date: 2026-01-05
+draft: false
+image:
+    url: yash.jpeg
+    attribution:
+authors:
+ - fdrees
+tags:
+ - lfx
+ - mentorship
+ - kubernetes
+ - postgresql
+ - litmus
+ - devops
+summary: "Meet the mentee: Yash Agarwal worked with the project maintainers on adding 
+chaos testing to CloudNativePG, as part of the LFX mentorship program." 
+---
+
+In the summer we wrote about how CloudNativePG was back for the September-
+October-November LFX term with [several projects for mentoring](https://cloudnative-pg.io/blog/2025-term3-lfx-cncf-mentorship/). One of them was 
+around Chaos Testing. 
+
+Yash Agarwal worked with mentors and CloudNativePG maintainers Gabriele Bartolini, 
+Marco Nenciarini, Francesco Canovai, and Jonathan Gonzalez, to enhance the 
+project's test coverage. Introducing LitmusChaos, a comprehensive chaos testing 
+framework, the team designed automated chaos experiments for common failure 
+scenarios, integrated them into CI/CD workflows, and collected observability 
+metrics like failover time and data consistency. I had a chat with Yash about 
+his work, and about how he got into Tech in the first place. 
+
+## Start at the beginning
+
+Yash's venture into programming started when he got introduced to Python in 11th 
+grade. He was always fascinated by technology, and got further inspired to pursue 
+a career as a programmer by his cousin Amit, a software developer.
+
+Today Yash is a full stack developer intern at Seeqlo, where he, among other 
+things, focuses on streamlining cloud operations and optimizing performance. 
+Based in Bengaluru, India, Yash is a member of Point Blank, a student-run tech 
+community dedicated to learning together. 
+
+He looks back at working with the CloudNativePG team as a "great learning experience". 
+They met twice a week for 30 minutes to discuss the progress of the project. 
+One thing that Yash says he learned is to have more patience. 
+
+## Chaos testing
+
+The new [chaos-testing repository](https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/chaos-testing) Yash worked on provides automated tools to validate 
+PostgreSQL cluster resilience under failure conditions. It combines two testing 
+approaches:
+
+* Jepsen Consistency Testing - Uses the famous Jepsen framework to perform 
+mathematical proofs of database consistency. It continuously runs database 
+operations (50 ops/sec) and validates that no data is lost or corrupted during 
+failures.
+* LitmusChaos Fault Injection - Uses LitmusChaos to simulate real-world failures 
+by repeatedly deleting the PostgreSQL primary pod (every 60-180 seconds), 
+forcing CloudNativePG to perform automatic failover.
+
+You can read more about the project in the repository's [README](https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/chaos-testing/blob/main/README.md). And, in case 
+you're curious, here's Yash's PR: https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/chaos-testing/pull/3 
+
+
+## Contributing to Litmus itself
+
+Yash wasn't able to find how to get the chaos engine to target the primary pods 
+since the appKind CloudNativePG uses isn't natively supported by Litmus. "I tried 
+many things, but when I tried AppKind as "cluster" it worked! I read the Litmus 
+code and found that there were some validations which prevented "Cluster" (capital 
+"C") from working. This behavior was not described in Litmus' documentation, 
+which meant I could submit a PR and prevent the next person from running into 
+the same issue!"
+
+## What's next?
+
+In the second half of his 3rd year, Yash is exploring opportunities in the field 
+of backend and DevOps. "I will surely try to contribute more towards CloudNativePG 
+when time permits!" You can follow Yash's work on [GitHub](https://github.com/XploY04).