17.2. Optimizing virtual machine performance using TuneD

The TuneD utility is a tuning profile delivery mechanism that adapts RHEL for certain workload characteristics, such as requirements for CPU-intensive tasks or storage-network throughput responsiveness. It provides a number of tuning profiles that are pre-configured to enhance performance and reduce power consumption in a number of specific use cases. You can edit these profiles or create new profiles to create performance solutions tailored to your environment, including virtualized environments.

To optimize RHEL 9 for virtualization, use the following profiles:

  • For RHEL 9 virtual machines, use the virtual-guest profile. It is based on the generally applicable throughput-performance profile, but also decreases the swappiness of virtual memory.
  • For RHEL 9 virtualization hosts, use the virtual-host profile. This enables more aggressive writeback of dirty memory pages, which benefits the host performance.

Conditions préalables

Procédure

To enable a specific TuneD profile:

  1. List the available TuneD profiles. 

    # tuned-adm list

Available profiles:
- balanced             - General non-specialized TuneD profile
- desktop              - Optimize for the desktop use-case
[...]
- virtual-guest        - Optimize for running inside a virtual guest
- virtual-host         - Optimize for running KVM guests
Current active profile: balanced

  2. Optional: Create a new TuneD profile or edit an existing TuneD profile.

    For more information, see Customizing TuneD profiles.

  3. Activate a TuneD profile. 

    # tuned-adm profile selected-profile

    • To optimize a virtualization host, use the virtual-host profile. 

      # tuned-adm profile virtual-host

    • On a RHEL guest operating system, use the virtual-guest profile. 

      # tuned-adm profile virtual-guest

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