Monitoring and managing system status and performance

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

Optimizing system throughput, latency, and power consumption

Red Hat Customer Content Services

Abstract

This documentation collection provides instructions on how to monitor and optimize the throughput, latency, and power consumption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 in different scenarios.

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Chapter 1. Getting started with Tuned

As a system administrator, you can use the Tuned application to optimize the performance profile of your system for a variety of use cases.

1.1. The purpose of Tuned

Tuned is a service that monitors your system and optimizes the performance under certain workloads. The core of Tuned are profiles, which tune your system for different use cases.

Tuned is distributed with a number of predefined profiles for use cases such as:

High throughput
Low latency
Saving power

It is possible to modify the rules defined for each profile and customize how to tune a particular device. When you switch to another profile or deactivate Tuned, all changes made to the system settings by the previous profile revert back to their original state.

You can also configure Tuned to react to changes in device usage and adjusts settings to improve performance of active devices and reduce power consumption of inactive devices.

1.2. Tuned profiles

A detailed analysis of a system can be very time-consuming. Tuned provides a number of predefined profiles for typical use cases. You can also create, modify, and delete profiles.

The profiles provided with Tuned are divided into the following categories:

Power-saving profiles
Performance-boosting profiles

The performance-boosting profiles include profiles that focus on the following aspects:

Low latency for storage and network
High throughput for storage and network
Virtual machine performance
Virtualization host performance

The default profile

During the installation, the best profile for your system is selected automatically. Currently, the default profile is selected according to the following customizable rules:

Environment	Default profile	Goal
Compute nodes	`throughput-performance`	The best throughput performance
Virtual machines	`virtual-guest`	The best performance. If you are not interested in the best performance, you can change it to the `balanced` or `powersave` profile.
Other cases	`balanced`	Balanced performance and power consumption

Merged profiles

As an experimental feature, it is possible to select more profiles at once. Tuned will try to merge them during the load.

If there are conflicts, the settings from the last specified profile takes precedence.

Example 1.1. Low power consumption in a virtual guest

The following example optimizes the system to run in a virtual machine for the best performance and concurrently tunes it for low power consumption, while the low power consumption is the priority:

# tuned-adm profile virtual-guest powersave

Warning

Merging is done automatically without checking whether the resulting combination of parameters makes sense. Consequently, the feature might tune some parameters the opposite way, which might be counterproductive: for example, setting the disk for high throughput by using the throughput-performance profile and concurrently setting the disk spindown to the low value by the spindown-disk profile.

The location of profiles

Tuned stores profiles in the following directories:

/usr/lib/tuned/: Distribution-specific profiles are stored in the directory. Each profile has its own directory. The profile consists of the main configuration file called tuned.conf, and optionally other files, for example helper scripts.
/etc/tuned/: If you need to customize a profile, copy the profile directory into the directory, which is used for custom profiles. If there are two profiles of the same name, the custom profile located in /etc/tuned/ is used.

The syntax of profile configuration

The tuned.conf file can contain one [main] section and other sections for configuring plug-in instances. However, all sections are optional.

Lines starting with the hash sign (#) are comments.

Additional resources

The tuned.conf(5) man page.

1.3. Tuned profiles distributed with RHEL

The following is a list of profiles that are installed with Tuned on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Note

There might be more product-specific or third-party Tuned profiles available. Such profiles are usually provided by separate RPM packages.

balanced: The default power-saving profile. It is intended to be a compromise between performance and power consumption. It uses auto-scaling and auto-tuning whenever possible. The only drawback is the increased latency. In the current Tuned release, it enables the CPU, disk, audio, and video plugins, and activates the conservative CPU governor. The radeon_powersave option uses the dpm-balanced value if it is supported, otherwise it is set to auto.
powersave: A profile for maximum power saving performance. It can throttle the performance in order to minimize the actual power consumption. In the current Tuned release it enables USB autosuspend, WiFi power saving, and Aggressive Link Power Management (ALPM) power savings for SATA host adapters. It also schedules multi-core power savings for systems with a low wakeup rate and activates the ondemand governor. It enables AC97 audio power saving or, depending on your system, HDA-Intel power savings with a 10 seconds timeout. If your system contains a supported Radeon graphics card with enabled KMS, the profile configures it to automatic power saving. On ASUS Eee PCs, a dynamic Super Hybrid Engine is enabled.
Note
In certain cases, the balanced profile is more efficient compared to the powersave profile.
Consider there is a defined amount of work that needs to be done, for example a video file that needs to be transcoded. Your machine might consume less energy if the transcoding is done on the full power, because the task is finished quickly, the machine starts to idle, and it can automatically step-down to very efficient power save modes. On the other hand, if you transcode the file with a throttled machine, the machine consumes less power during the transcoding, but the process takes longer and the overall consumed energy can be higher.
That is why the balanced profile can be generally a better option.
throughput-performance: A server profile optimized for high throughput. It disables power savings mechanisms and enables sysctl settings that improve the throughput performance of the disk and network IO. CPU governor is set to performance.
latency-performance: A server profile optimized for low latency. It disables power savings mechanisms and enables sysctl settings that improve latency. CPU governor is set to performance and the CPU is locked to the low C states (by PM QoS).
network-latency: A profile for low latency network tuning. It is based on the latency-performance profile. It additionally disables transparent huge pages and NUMA balancing, and tunes several other network-related sysctl parameters.
network-throughput: A profile for throughput network tuning. It is based on the throughput-performance profile. It additionally increases kernel network buffers.
virtual-guest: A profile designed for virtual guests based on the throughput-performance profile that, among other tasks, decreases virtual memory swappiness and increases disk readahead values. It does not disable disk barriers.
virtual-host: A profile designed for virtual hosts based on the throughput-performance profile that, among other tasks, decreases virtual memory swappiness, increases disk readahead values, and enables a more aggressive value of dirty pages writeback.
oracle: A profile optimized for Oracle databases loads based on throughput-performance profile. It additionally disables transparent huge pages and modifies other performance-related kernel parameters. This profile is provided by the tuned-profiles-oracle package.
desktop: A profile optimized for desktops, based on the balanced profile. It additionally enables scheduler autogroups for better response of interactive applications.

Real-time profiles

Real-time profiles are intended for systems running the real-time kernel. Without a special kernel build, they do not configure the system to be real-time. On RHEL, the profiles are available from additional repositories.

The following real-time profiles are available:

realtime

Use on bare-metal real-time systems.

Provided by the tuned-profiles-realtime package, which is available from the RT or NFV repositories.

realtime-virtual-host

Use in a virtualization host configured for real-time.

Provided by the tuned-profiles-nfv-host package, which is available from the NFV repository.

realtime-virtual-guest

Use in a virtualization guest configured for real-time.

Provided by the tuned-profiles-nfv-guest package, which is available from the NFV repository.

1.4. Static and dynamic tuning in Tuned

This section explains the difference between the two categories of system tuning that Tuned applies: static and dynamic.

Static tuning

Mainly consists of the application of predefined sysctl and sysfs settings and one-shot activation of several configuration tools such as ethtool.

Dynamic tuning

Watches how various system components are used throughout the uptime of your system. Tuned adjusts system settings dynamically based on that monitoring information.

For example, the hard drive is used heavily during startup and login, but is barely used later when the user might mainly work with applications such as web browsers or email clients. Similarly, the CPU and network devices are used differently at different times. Tuned monitors the activity of these components and reacts to the changes in their use.

By default, dynamic tuning is disabled. To enable it, edit the /etc/tuned/tuned-main.conf file and change the dynamic_tuning option to 1. Tuned then periodically analyzes system statistics and uses them to update your system tuning settings. To configure the time interval in seconds between these updates, use the update_interval option.

Currently implemented dynamic tuning algorithms try to balance the performance and powersave, and are therefore disabled in the performance profiles. Dynamic tuning for individual plug-ins can be enabled or disabled in the Tuned profiles.

Example 1.2. Static and dynamic tuning on a workstation

On a typical office workstation, the Ethernet network interface is inactive most of the time. Only a few emails go in and out or some web pages might be loaded.

For those kinds of loads, the network interface does not have to run at full speed all the time, as it does by default. Tuned has a monitoring and tuning plug-in for network devices that can detect this low activity and then automatically lower the speed of that interface, typically resulting in a lower power usage.

If the activity on the interface increases for a longer period of time, for example because a DVD image is being downloaded or an email with a large attachment is opened, Tuned detects this and sets the interface speed to maximum to offer the best performance while the activity level is high.

This principle is used for other plug-ins for CPU and disks as well.

1.5. Tuned no-daemon mode

You can run Tuned in no-daemon mode, which does not require any resident memory. In this mode, Tuned applies the settings and exits.

By default, no-daemon mode is disabled because a lot of Tuned functionality is missing in this mode, including:

D-Bus support
Hot-plug support
Rollback support for settings

To enable no-daemon mode, include the following line in the /etc/tuned/tuned-main.conf file:

daemon = 0

1.6. Installing and enabling Tuned

This procedure installs and enables the Tuned application, installs Tuned profiles, and presets a default Tuned profile for your system.

Procedure

Install the tuned package:
```
# yum install tuned
```
Enable and start the tuned service:
```
# systemctl enable --now tuned
```

Optionally, install Tuned profiles for real-time systems:

# yum install tuned-profiles-realtime tuned-profiles-nfv

Verify that a Tuned profile is active and applied:

$ tuned-adm active

Current active profile: balanced

$ tuned-adm verify

Verfication succeeded, current system settings match the preset profile.
See tuned log file ('/var/log/tuned/tuned.log') for details.

1.7. Listing available Tuned profiles

This procedure lists all Tuned profiles that are currently available on your system.

Procedure

To list all available Tuned profiles on your system, use:

$ tuned-adm list

Available profiles:
- balanced               - General non-specialized tuned profile
- desktop                - Optimize for the desktop use-case
- latency-performance    - Optimize for deterministic performance at the cost of increased power consumption
- network-latency        - Optimize for deterministic performance at the cost of increased power consumption, focused on low latency network performance
- network-throughput     - Optimize for streaming network throughput, generally only necessary on older CPUs or 40G+ networks
- powersave              - Optimize for low power consumption
- throughput-performance - Broadly applicable tuning that provides excellent performance across a variety of common server workloads
- virtual-guest          - Optimize for running inside a virtual guest
- virtual-host           - Optimize for running KVM guests
Current active profile: balanced

To display only the currently active profile, use:

$ tuned-adm active

Current active profile: balanced

Additional resources

The tuned-adm(8) man page.

1.8. Setting a Tuned profile

This procedure activates a selected Tuned profile on your system.

Prerequisites

The tuned service is running. See Section 1.6, “Installing and enabling Tuned” for details.

Procedure

Optionally, you can let Tuned recommend the most suitable profile for your system:
```
# tuned-adm recommend

balanced
```
Activate a profile:
```
# tuned-adm profile selected-profile
```
Alternatively, you can activate a combination of multiple profiles:
```
# tuned-adm profile profile1 profile2
```
Example 1.3. A virtual machine optimized for low power consumption
The following example optimizes the system to run in a virtual machine with the best performance and concurrently tunes it for low power consumption, while the low power consumption is the priority:
```
# tuned-adm profile virtual-guest powersave
```

Verify that the Tuned profile is active and applied:

$ tuned-adm active

Current active profile: selected-profile

$ tuned-adm verify

Verfication succeeded, current system settings match the preset profile.
See tuned log file ('/var/log/tuned/tuned.log') for details.

Additional resources

The tuned-adm(8) man page

1.9. Disabling Tuned

This procedure disables Tuned and resets all affected system settings to their original state before Tuned modified them.

Procedure

To disable all tunings temporarily:
```
# tuned-adm off
```
The tunings are applied again after the tuned service restarts.
Alternatively, to stop and disable the tuned service permanently:
```
# systemctl disable --now tuned
```

Additional resources

The tuned-adm(8) man page.

Chapter 2. Customizing Tuned profiles

You can create or modify Tuned profiles to optimize system performance for your intended use case.

2.1. Prerequisites

Install and enable Tuned as described in Section 1.6, “Installing and enabling Tuned”.

2.2. Tuned profiles

A detailed analysis of a system can be very time-consuming. Tuned provides a number of predefined profiles for typical use cases. You can also create, modify, and delete profiles.

The profiles provided with Tuned are divided into the following categories:

Power-saving profiles
Performance-boosting profiles

The performance-boosting profiles include profiles that focus on the following aspects:

Low latency for storage and network
High throughput for storage and network
Virtual machine performance
Virtualization host performance

The default profile

During the installation, the best profile for your system is selected automatically. Currently, the default profile is selected according to the following customizable rules:

Environment	Default profile	Goal
Compute nodes	`throughput-performance`	The best throughput performance
Virtual machines	`virtual-guest`	The best performance. If you are not interested in the best performance, you can change it to the `balanced` or `powersave` profile.
Other cases	`balanced`	Balanced performance and power consumption

Merged profiles

As an experimental feature, it is possible to select more profiles at once. Tuned will try to merge them during the load.

If there are conflicts, the settings from the last specified profile takes precedence.

Example 2.1. Low power consumption in a virtual guest

The following example optimizes the system to run in a virtual machine for the best performance and concurrently tunes it for low power consumption, while the low power consumption is the priority:

# tuned-adm profile virtual-guest powersave

Warning

The location of profiles

Tuned stores profiles in the following directories:

/usr/lib/tuned/: Distribution-specific profiles are stored in the directory. Each profile has its own directory. The profile consists of the main configuration file called tuned.conf, and optionally other files, for example helper scripts.
/etc/tuned/: If you need to customize a profile, copy the profile directory into the directory, which is used for custom profiles. If there are two profiles of the same name, the custom profile located in /etc/tuned/ is used.

The syntax of profile configuration

The tuned.conf file can contain one [main] section and other sections for configuring plug-in instances. However, all sections are optional.

Lines starting with the hash sign (#) are comments.

Additional resources

The tuned.conf(5) man page.

2.3. Inheritance between Tuned profiles

Tuned profiles can be based on other profiles and modify only certain aspects of their parent profile.

The [main] section of Tuned profiles recognizes the include option:

[main]
include=parent

All settings from the parent profile are loaded in this child profile. In the following sections, the child profile can override certain settings inherited from the parent profile or add new settings not present in the parent profile.

You can create your own child profile in the /etc/tuned/ directory based on a pre-installed profile in /usr/lib/tuned/ with only some parameters adjusted.

If the parent profile is updated, such as after a Tuned upgrade, the changes are reflected in the child profile.

Example 2.2. A power-saving profile based on balanced

The following is an example of a custom profile that extends the balanced profile and sets Aggressive Link Power Management (ALPM) for all devices to the maximum powersaving.

[main]
include=balanced

[scsi_host]
alpm=min_power

Additional resources

The tuned.conf(5) man page

2.4. Static and dynamic tuning in Tuned

This section explains the difference between the two categories of system tuning that Tuned applies: static and dynamic.

Static tuning

Mainly consists of the application of predefined sysctl and sysfs settings and one-shot activation of several configuration tools such as ethtool.

Dynamic tuning

Watches how various system components are used throughout the uptime of your system. Tuned adjusts system settings dynamically based on that monitoring information.

Example 2.3. Static and dynamic tuning on a workstation

On a typical office workstation, the Ethernet network interface is inactive most of the time. Only a few emails go in and out or some web pages might be loaded.

This principle is used for other plug-ins for CPU and disks as well.

2.5. Tuned plug-ins

Plug-ins are modules in Tuned profiles that Tuned uses to monitor or optimize different devices on the system.

Tuned uses two types of plug-ins:

monitoring plug-ins
tuning plug-ins

Monitoring plug-ins

Monitoring plug-ins are used to get information from a running system. The output of the monitoring plug-ins can be used by tuning plug-ins for dynamic tuning.

Monitoring plug-ins are automatically instantiated whenever their metrics are needed by any of the enabled tuning plug-ins. If two tuning plug-ins require the same data, only one instance of the monitoring plug-in is created and the data is shared.

Tuning plug-ins

Each tuning plug-in tunes an individual subsystem and takes several parameters that are populated from the tuned profiles. Each subsystem can have multiple devices, such as multiple CPUs or network cards, that are handled by individual instances of the tuning plug-ins. Specific settings for individual devices are also supported.

Syntax for plug-ins in Tuned profiles

Sections describing plug-in instances are formatted in the following way:

[NAME]
type=TYPE
devices=DEVICES

NAME

is the name of the plug-in instance as it is used in the logs. It can be an arbitrary string.

TYPE

is the type of the tuning plug-in.

DEVICES

is the list of devices that this plug-in instance handles.

The devices line can contain a list, a wildcard (*), and negation (!). If there is no devices line, all devices present or later attached on the system of the TYPE are handled by the plug-in instance. This is same as using the devices=* option.

Example 2.4. Matching block devices with a plug-in

The following example matches all block devices starting with sd, such as sda or sdb, and does not disable barriers on them:

[data_disk]
type=disk
devices=sd*
disable_barriers=false

The following example matches all block devices except sda1 and sda2:

[data_disk]
type=disk
devices=!sda1, !sda2
disable_barriers=false

If no instance of a plug-in is specified, the plug-in is not enabled.

If the plug-in supports more options, they can be also specified in the plug-in section. If the option is not specified and it was not previously specified in the included plug-in, the default value is used.

Short plug-in syntax

If you do not need custom names for the plug-in instance and there is only one definition of the instance in your configuration file, Tuned supports the following short syntax:

[TYPE]
devices=DEVICES

In this case, it is possible to omit the type line. The instance is then referred to with a name, same as the type. The previous example could be then rewritten into:

Example 2.5. Matching block devices using the short syntax

[disk]
devices=sdb*
disable_barriers=false

Conflicting plug-in definitions in a profile

If the same section is specified more than once using the include option, the settings are merged. If they cannot be merged due to a conflict, the last conflicting definition overrides the previous settings. If you do not know what was previously defined, you can use the replace Boolean option and set it to true. This causes all the previous definitions with the same name to be overwritten and the merge does not happen.

You can also disable the plug-in by specifying the enabled=false option. This has the same effect as if the instance was never defined. Disabling the plug-in is useful if you are redefining the previous definition from the include option and do not want the plug-in to be active in your custom profile.

Functionality not implemented in any plug-in

Tuned includes the ability to run any shell command as part of enabling or disabling a tuning profile. This enables you to extend Tuned profiles with functionality that has not been integrated into Tuned yet.

You can specify arbitrary shell commands using the script plug-in.

Additional resources

The tuned.conf(5) man page

2.6. Available Tuned plug-ins

This section lists all monitoring and tuning plug-ins currently available in Tuned.

Monitoring plug-ins

Currently, the following monitoring plug-ins are implemented:

disk: Gets disk load (number of IO operations) per device and measurement interval.
net: Gets network load (number of transferred packets) per network card and measurement interval.
load: Gets CPU load per CPU and measurement interval.

Tuning plug-ins

Currently, the following tuning plug-ins are implemented. Only some of these plug-ins implement dynamic tuning. Options supported by plug-ins are also listed:

cpu

Sets the CPU governor to the value specified by the governor option and dynamically changes the Power Management Quality of Service (PM QoS) CPU Direct Memory Access (DMA) latency according to the CPU load.

If the CPU load is lower than the value specified by the load_threshold option, the latency is set to the value specified by the latency_high option, otherwise it is set to the value specified by latency_low.

You can also force the latency to a specific value and prevent it from dynamically changing further. To do so, set the force_latency option to the required latency value.

eeepc_she

Dynamically sets the front-side bus (FSB) speed according to the CPU load.

This feature can be found on some netbooks and is also known as the ASUS Super Hybrid Engine (SHE).

If the CPU load is lower or equal to the value specified by the load_threshold_powersave option, the plug-in sets the FSB speed to the value specified by the she_powersave option. If the CPU load is higher or equal to the value specified by the load_threshold_normal option, it sets the FSB speed to the value specified by the she_normal option.

Static tuning is not supported and the plug-in is transparently disabled if Tuned does not detect the hardware support for this feature.

net

Configures the Wake-on-LAN functionality to the values specified by the wake_on_lan option. It uses the same syntax as the ethtool utility. It also dynamically changes the interface speed according to the interface utilization.

sysctl

Sets various sysctl settings specified by the plug-in options.

The syntax is name=value, where name is the same as the name provided by the sysctl utility.

Use the sysctl plug-in if you need to change system settings that are not covered by other plug-ins available in Tuned. If the settings are covered by some specific plug-ins, prefer these plug-ins.

usb

Sets autosuspend timeout of USB devices to the value specified by the autosuspend parameter.

The value 0 means that autosuspend is disabled.

vm

Enables or disables transparent huge pages depending on the Boolean value of the transparent_hugepages option.

audio

Sets the autosuspend timeout for audio codecs to the value specified by the timeout option.

Currently, the snd_hda_intel and snd_ac97_codec codecs are supported. The value 0 means that the autosuspend is disabled. You can also enforce the controller reset by setting the Boolean option reset_controller to true.

disk

Sets the disk elevator to the value specified by the elevator option.

It also sets:

APM to the value specified by the apm option
Scheduler quantum to the value specified by the scheduler_quantum option
Disk spindown timeout to the value specified by the spindown option
Disk readahead to the value specified by the readahead parameter
The current disk readahead to a value multiplied by the constant specified by the readahead_multiply option

In addition, this plug-in dynamically changes the advanced power management and spindown timeout setting for the drive according to the current drive utilization. The dynamic tuning can be controlled by the Boolean option dynamic and is enabled by default.

scsi_host

Tunes options for SCSI hosts.

It sets Aggressive Link Power Management (ALPM) to the value specified by the alpm option.

mounts

Enables or disables barriers for mounts according to the Boolean value of the disable_barriers option.

script

Executes an external script or binary when the profile is loaded or unloaded. You can choose an arbitrary executable.

Important

The script plug-in is provided mainly for compatibility with earlier releases. Prefer other Tuned plug-ins if they cover the required functionality.

Tuned calls the executable with one of the following arguments:

start when loading the profile
stop when unloading the profile

You need to correctly implement the stop action in your executable and revert all settings that you changed during the start action. Otherwise, the roll-back step after changing your Tuned profile will not work.

Bash scripts can import the /usr/lib/tuned/functions Bash library and use the functions defined there. Use these functions only for functionality that is not natively provided by Tuned. If a function name starts with an underscore, such as _wifi_set_power_level, consider the function private and do not use it in your scripts, because it might change in the future.

Specify the path to the executable using the script parameter in the plug-in configuration.

Example 2.6. Running a Bash script from a profile

To run a Bash script named script.sh that is located in the profile directory, use:

[script]
script=${i:PROFILE_DIR}/script.sh

sysfs

Sets various sysfs settings specified by the plug-in options.

The syntax is name=value, where name is the sysfs path to use.

Use this plugin in case you need to change some settings that are not covered by other plug-ins. Prefer specific plug-ins if they cover the required settings.

video

Sets various powersave levels on video cards. Currently, only the Radeon cards are supported.

The powersave level can be specified by using the radeon_powersave option. Supported values are:

default
auto
low
mid
high
dynpm
dpm-battery
dpm-balanced
dpm-perfomance

For details, see www.x.org. Note that this plug-in is experimental and the option might change in future releases.

bootloader

Adds options to the kernel command line. This plug-in supports only the GRUB 2 boot loader.

Customized non-standard location of the GRUB 2 configuration file can be specified by the grub2_cfg_file option.

The kernel options are added to the current GRUB configuration and its templates. The system needs to be rebooted for the kernel options to take effect.

Switching to another profile or manually stopping the tuned service removes the additional options. If you shut down or reboot the system, the kernel options persist in the grub.cfg file.

The kernel options can be specified by the following syntax:

cmdline=arg1 arg2 ... argN

Example 2.7. Modifying the kernel command line

For example, to add the quiet kernel option to a Tuned profile, include the following lines in the tuned.conf file:

[bootloader]
cmdline=quiet

The following is an example of a custom profile that adds the isolcpus=2 option to the kernel command line:

[bootloader]
cmdline=isolcpus=2

2.7. Variables and built-in functions in Tuned profiles

Variables and built-in functions expand at run time when a Tuned profile is activated.

Using Tuned variables reduces the amount of necessary typing in Tuned profiles. You can also:

Use various built-in functions together with Tuned variables
Create custom functions in Python and add them to Tuned in the form of plug-ins

Variables

There are no predefined variables in Tuned profiles. You can define your own variables by creating the [variables] section in a profile and using the following syntax:

[variables]

variable_name=value

To expand the value of a variable in a profile, use the following syntax:

${variable_name}

Example 2.8. Isolating CPU cores using variables

In the following example, the ${isolated_cores} variable expands to 1,2; hence the kernel boots with the isolcpus=1,2 option:

[variables]
isolated_cores=1,2

[bootloader]
cmdline=isolcpus=${isolated_cores}

The variables can be specified in a separate file. For example, you can add the following lines to tuned.conf:

[variables]
include=/etc/tuned/my-variables.conf

[bootloader]
cmdline=isolcpus=${isolated_cores}

If you add the isolated_cores=1,2 option to the /etc/tuned/my-variables.conf file, the kernel boots with the isolcpus=1,2 option.

Functions

To call a function, use the following syntax:

${f:function_name:argument_1:argument_2}

To expand the directory path where the profile and the tuned.conf file are located, use the PROFILE_DIR function, which requires special syntax:

${i:PROFILE_DIR}

Example 2.9. Isolating CPU cores using variables and built-in functions

In the following example, the ${non_isolated_cores} variable expands to 0,3-5, and the cpulist_invert built-in function is called with the 0,3-5 argument:

[variables]
non_isolated_cores=0,3-5

[bootloader]
cmdline=isolcpus=${f:cpulist_invert:${non_isolated_cores}}

The cpulist_invert function inverts the list of CPUs. For a 6-CPU machine, the inversion is 1,2, and the kernel boots with the isolcpus=1,2 command-line option.

Additional resources

The tuned.conf(5) man page

2.8. Built-in functions available in Tuned profiles

The following built-in functions are available in all Tuned profiles:

PROFILE_DIR

Returns the directory path where the profile and the tuned.conf file are located.

exec

Executes a process and returns its output.

assertion

Compares two arguments. If they do not match, the function logs text from the first argument and aborts profile loading.

assertion_non_equal

Compares two arguments. If they match, the function logs text from the first argument and aborts profile loading.

kb2s

Converts kilobytes to disk sectors.

s2kb

Converts disk sectors to kilobytes.

strip

Creates a string from all passed arguments and deletes both leading and trailing white space.

virt_check

Checks whether Tuned is running inside a virtual machine (VM) or on bare metal:

Inside a VM, the function returns the first argument.
On bare metal, the function returns the second argument, even in case of an error.

cpulist_invert

Inverts a list of CPUs to make its complement. For example, on a system with 4 CPUs, numbered from 0 to 3, the inversion of the list 0,2,3 is 1.

cpulist2hex

Converts a CPU list to a hexadecimal CPU mask.

cpulist2hex_invert

Converts a CPU list to a hexadecimal CPU mask and inverts it.

hex2cpulist

Converts a hexadecimal CPU mask to a CPU list.

cpulist_online

Checks whether the CPUs from the list are online. Returns the list containing only online CPUs.

cpulist_present

Checks whether the CPUs from the list are present. Returns the list containing only present CPUs.

cpulist_unpack

Unpacks a CPU list in the form of 1-3,4 to 1,2,3,4.

cpulist_pack

Packs a CPU list in the form of 1,2,3,5 to 1-3,5.

2.9. Creating new Tuned profiles

This procedure creates a new Tuned profile with custom performance rules.

Prerequisites

The tuned service is installed and running. See Section 1.6, “Installing and enabling Tuned” for details.

Procedure

In the /etc/tuned/ directory, create a new directory named the same as the profile that you want to create:
```
# mkdir /etc/tuned/my-profile
```

In the new directory, create a file named tuned.conf. Add a [main] section and plug-in definitions in it, according to your requirements.

For example, see the configuration of the balanced profile:

[main]
summary=General non-specialized tuned profile

[cpu]
governor=conservative
energy_perf_bias=normal

[audio]
timeout=10

[video]
radeon_powersave=dpm-balanced, auto

[scsi_host]
alpm=medium_power

To activate the profile, use:
```
# tuned-adm profile my-profile
```

Verify that the Tuned profile is active and the system settings are applied:

$ tuned-adm active

Current active profile: my-profile

$ tuned-adm verify

Verfication succeeded, current system settings match the preset profile.
See tuned log file ('/var/log/tuned/tuned.log') for details.

Additional resources

The tuned.conf(5) man page

2.10. Modifying existing Tuned profiles

This procedure creates a modified child profile based on an existing Tuned profile.

Prerequisites

The tuned service is installed and running. See Section 1.6, “Installing and enabling Tuned” for details.

Procedure

In the /etc/tuned/ directory, create a new directory named the same as the profile that you want to create:
```
# mkdir /etc/tuned/modified-profile
```
In the new directory, create a file named tuned.conf, and set the [main] section as follows:
```
[main]
include=parent-profile
```
Replace parent-profile with the name of the profile you are modifying.
Include your profile modifications.
Example 2.10. Lowering swappiness in the throughput-performance profile
To use the settings from the throughput-performance profile and change the value of vm.swappiness to 5, instead of the default 10, use:
```
[main]
include=throughput-performance

[sysctl]
vm.swappiness=5
```
To activate the profile, use:
```
# tuned-adm profile modified-profile
```

Verify that the Tuned profile is active and the system settings are applied:

$ tuned-adm active

Current active profile: my-profile

$ tuned-adm verify

Verfication succeeded, current system settings match the preset profile.
See tuned log file ('/var/log/tuned/tuned.log') for details.

Additional resources

The tuned.conf(5) man page

Chapter 3. Using the web console for selecting performance profiles

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 includes performance profiles optimizing:

Systems using Desktop
Latency performance
Network performance
Low power consumption
Virtual machines

The following procedure describes setting up performance profiles in the web console.

The RHEL 8 web console configures the tuned service.

For details about the tuned service, see Monitoring and managing system status and performance.

Prerequisites

The web console must be installed and accessible.
For details, see Installing the web console.

Procedure

Log in to the RHEL 8 web console.
For details, see Logging in to the web console.
Click System.
In the Performance Profile field, click the current performance profile.
In the Change Performance Profile dialog box, change the profile if necessary.
Click Change.

The change is now available in the System tab.

Chapter 4. Tuning the performance of a Samba server

This chapter describes what settings can improve the performance of Samba in certain situations, and which settings can have a negative performance impact.

Parts of this section were adopted from the Performance Tuning documentation published in the Samba Wiki. License: CC BY 4.0. Authors and contributors: See the history tab on the Wiki page.

Prerequisites

Samba is set up as a file or print server
See Using Samba as a server.

4.1. Setting the SMB protocol version

Each new SMB version adds features and improves the performance of the protocol. The recent Windows and Windows Server operating systems always supports the latest protocol version. If Samba also uses the latest protocol version, Windows clients connecting to Samba benefit from the performance improvements. In Samba, the default value of the server max protocol is set to the latest supported stable SMB protocol version.

Note

To always have the latest stable SMB protocol version enabled, do not set the server max protocol parameter. If you set the parameter manually, you will need to modify the setting with each new version of the SMB protocol, to have the latest protocol version enabled.

The following procedure explains how to use the default value in the server max protocol parameter.

Procedure

Remove the server max protocol parameter from the [global] section in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.
Reload the Samba configuration
```
# smbcontrol all reload-config
```

4.2. Tuning shares with directories that contain a large number of files

Linux supports case-sensitive file names. For this reason, Samba needs to scan directories for uppercase and lowercase file names when searching or accessing a file. You can configure a share to create new files only in lowercase or uppercase, which improves the performance.

Prerequisites

Samba is configured as a file server

Procedure

Rename all files on the share to lowercase.
Note
Using the settings in this procedure, files with names other than in lowercase will no longer be displayed.
Set the following parameters in the share’s section:
```
case sensitive = true
default case = lower
preserve case = no
short preserve case = no
```
For details about the parameters, see their descriptions in the smb.conf(5) man page.
Verify the /etc/samba/smb.conf file:
```
# testparm
```
Reload the Samba configuration:
```
# smbcontrol all reload-config
```

After you applied these settings, the names of all newly created files on this share use lowercase. Because of these settings, Samba no longer needs to scan the directory for uppercase and lowercase, which improves the performance.

Additional resources

Verifying the smb.conf file by using the testparm utility

4.3. Settings that can have a negative performance impact

By default, the kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is tuned for high network performance. For example, the kernel uses an auto-tuning mechanism for buffer sizes. Setting the socket options parameter in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file overrides these kernel settings. As a result, setting this parameter decreases the Samba network performance in most cases.

To use the optimized settings from the Kernel, remove the socket options parameter from the [global] section in the /etc/samba/smb.conf.

Chapter 5. Managing power consumption with PowerTOP

As a system administrator, you can use the PowerTOP tool to analyze and manage power consumption.

5.1. The purpose of PowerTOP

PowerTOP is a program that diagnoses issues related to power consumption and provides suggestions on how to extend battery lifetime.

The PowerTOP tool can provide an estimate of the total power usage of the system and also individual power usage for each process, device, kernel worker, timer, and interrupt handler. The tool can also identify specific components of kernel and user-space applications that frequently wake up the CPU.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 uses version 2.x of PowerTOP.

5.2. Using PowerTOP

5.2.1. Prerequisites

To be able to use PowerTOP, make sure that the powertop package has been installed on your system:
```
# yum install powertop
```

5.2.2. Starting PowerTOP

Procedure

To run PowerTOP, use the following command:
```
# powertop
```

Important

Laptops should run on battery power when running the powertop command.

5.2.3. Calibrating PowerTOP

Procedure

On a laptop, you can calibrate the power estimation engine by running the following command:
```
# powertop --calibrate
```
Let the calibration finish without interacting with the machine during the process.
Calibration takes time because the process performs various tests, cycles through brightness levels and switches devices on and off.
When the calibration process is completed, PowerTOP starts as normal. Let it run for approximately an hour to collect data.
When enough data is collected, power estimation figures will be displayed in the first column of the output table.

Note

Note that powertop --calibrate can only be used on laptops.

5.2.4. Setting the measuring interval

By default, PowerTOP takes measurements in 20 seconds intervals.

If you want to change this measuring frequency, use the following procedure:

Procedure

Run the powertop command with the --time option:
```
# powertop --time=time in seconds
```

5.3. PowerTOP statistics

While it runs, PowerTOP gathers statistics from the system.

PowerTOP's output provides multiple tabs:

Overview
Idle stats
Frequency stats
Device stats
Tunables

You can use the Tab and Shift+Tab keys to cycle through these tabs.

5.3.1. The Overview tab

In the Overview tab, you can view a list of the components that either send wakeups to the CPU most frequently or consume the most power. The items within the Overview tab, including processes, interrupts, devices, and other resources, are sorted according to their utilization.

The adjacent columns within the Overview tab provide the following pieces of information:

Usage: Power estimation of how the resource is being used.
Events/s: Wakeups per second. The number of wakeups per second indicates how efficiently the services or the devices and drivers of the kernel are performing. Less wakeups means that less power is consumed. Components are ordered by how much further their power usage can be optimized.
Category: Classification of the component; such as process, device, or timer.
Description: Description of the component.

If properly calibrated, a power consumption estimation for every listed item in the first column is shown as well.

Apart from this, the Overview tab includes the line with summary statistics such as:

Total power consumption
Remaining battery life (only if applicable)
Summary of total wakeups per second, GPU operations per second, and virtual file system operations per second

5.3.2. The Idle stats tab

The Idle stats tab shows usage of C-states for all processors and cores, while the Frequency stats tab shows usage of P-states including the Turbo mode, if applicable, for all processors and cores. The duration of C- or P-states is an indication of how well the CPU usage has been optimized. The longer the CPU stays in the higher C- or P-states (for example C4 is higher than C3), the better the CPU usage optimization is. Ideally, residency is 90% or more in the highest C- or P-state when the system is idle.

5.3.3. The Device stats tab

The Device stats tab provides similar information to the Overview tab but only for devices.

5.3.4. The Tunables tab

The Tunables tab contains PowerTOP's suggestions for optimizing the system for lower power consumption.

Use the up and down keys to move through suggestions, and the enter key to toggle the suggestion on or off.

Figure 5.1. PowerTOP output

Additional resources

For more details on PowerTOP, see PowerTOP’s home page.

5.4. Generating an HTML output

Apart from the powertop’s output in terminal, you can also generate an HTML report.

Procedure

Run the powertop command with the --html option:
```
# powertop --html=htmlfile.html
```
Replace the htmlfile.html parameter with the required name for the output file.

5.5. Optimizing power consumption

To optimize power consumption, you can use either the powertop service or the powertop2tuned utility.

5.5.1. Optimizing power consumption using the powertop service

You can use the powertop service to automatically enable all PowerTOP's suggestions from the Tunables tab on the boot:

Procedure

Enable the powertop service:
```
# systemctl enable powertop
```

5.5.2. The powertop2tuned utility

The powertop2tuned utility allows you to create custom Tuned profiles from PowerTOP suggestions.

By default, powertop2tuned creates profiles in the /etc/tuned/ directory, and bases the custom profile on the currently selected Tuned profile. For safety reasons, all PowerTOP tunings are initially disabled in the new profile.

To enable the tunings, you can:

Uncomment them in the /etc/tuned/profile_name/tuned.conf file.
Use the --enable or -e option to generate a new profile that enables most of the tunings suggested by PowerTOP.
Certain potentially problematic tunings, such as the USB autosuspend, are disabled by default and need to be uncommented manually.

5.5.3. Optimizing power consumption using the powertop2tuned utility

Prerequisites

The powertop2tuned utility is installed on the system:
```
# yum install tuned-utils
```

Procedure

Create a custom profile:
```
# powertop2tuned new_profile_name
```
Activate the new profile:
```
# tuned-adm profile new_profile_name
```

Additional information

For a complete list of options that powertop2tuned supports, use:
```
$ powertop2tuned --help
```

5.5.4. Comparison of powertop.service and powertop2tuned

Optimizing power consumption with powertop2tuned is preferred over powertop.service for the following reasons:

The powertop2tuned utility represents integration of PowerTOP into Tuned, which enables to benefit of advantages of both tools.
The powertop2tuned utility allows for fine-grained control of enabled tuning.
With powertop2tuned, potentially dangerous tuning are not automatically enabled.
With powertop2tuned, rollback is possible without reboot.

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Red Hat Training

Monitoring and managing system status and performance

Optimizing system throughput, latency, and power consumption

Providing feedback on Red Hat documentation

Chapter 1. Getting started with Tuned

1.1. The purpose of Tuned

1.2. Tuned profiles

The default profile

Merged profiles

The location of profiles

The syntax of profile configuration

Additional resources

1.3. Tuned profiles distributed with RHEL

Real-time profiles

1.4. Static and dynamic tuning in Tuned

1.5. Tuned no-daemon mode

1.6. Installing and enabling Tuned

Procedure

1.7. Listing available Tuned profiles

Procedure

Additional resources

1.8. Setting a Tuned profile

Prerequisites

Procedure

Additional resources

1.9. Disabling Tuned

Procedure

Additional resources

1.10. Related information

Chapter 2. Customizing Tuned profiles

2.1. Prerequisites

2.2. Tuned profiles

The default profile

Merged profiles

The location of profiles

The syntax of profile configuration

Additional resources

2.3. Inheritance between Tuned profiles

Additional resources

2.4. Static and dynamic tuning in Tuned

2.5. Tuned plug-ins

Monitoring plug-ins

Tuning plug-ins

Syntax for plug-ins in Tuned profiles

Short plug-in syntax

Conflicting plug-in definitions in a profile

Functionality not implemented in any plug-in

Additional resources

2.6. Available Tuned plug-ins

Monitoring plug-ins

Tuning plug-ins

2.7. Variables and built-in functions in Tuned profiles

Variables

Functions

Additional resources

2.8. Built-in functions available in Tuned profiles

2.9. Creating new Tuned profiles

Prerequisites

Procedure

Additional resources

2.10. Modifying existing Tuned profiles

Prerequisites

Procedure

Additional resources

2.11. Related information

Chapter 3. Using the web console for selecting performance profiles

Prerequisites

Procedure

Chapter 4. Tuning the performance of a Samba server

Prerequisites

4.1. Setting the SMB protocol version

Procedure

4.2. Tuning shares with directories that contain a large number of files

Prerequisites

Procedure

Additional resources

4.3. Settings that can have a negative performance impact

Chapter 5. Managing power consumption with PowerTOP

5.1. The purpose of PowerTOP

5.2. Using PowerTOP