Linux quickie: Set system tunables according to device profile

Yesterday, I discovered one interesting thing. It’s kind a new for me, but nothing special. There is a useful tool for setting system tunables according to the specific use of machine in RHEL based Linux distros like CentOS etc.

Its name is tuned-adm and you can find it in tuned package. If you don’t have this package installed, it’s easy to install:

yum install tuned

After installation the tool offers you system settings by several profiles:

# tuned-adm list
Available profiles:
- virtual-host
- default
- virtual-guest
- throughput-performance
- laptop-ac-powersave
- latency-performance
- desktop-powersave
- spindown-disk
- laptop-battery-powersave
- enterprise-storage
- server-powersave
Current active profile: default

As you can see, there’s a lot of to choose from. The profile is activated very simply:

# tuned-adm profile virtual-host
 Reverting to saved sysctl settings: [ OK ]
 Calling '/etc/ktune.d/tunedadm.sh stop': [ OK ]
 Reverting to cfq elevator: sda sdb [ OK ]
 Stopping tuned: [ OK ]
 Switching to profile 'virtual-host'
 Applying ktune sysctl settings:
 /etc/ktune.d/tunedadm.conf: [ OK ]
 Calling '/etc/ktune.d/tunedadm.sh start': [ OK ]
 Applying sysctl settings from /etc/sysctl.conf
 Applying deadline elevator: sda sdb [ OK ]
 Starting tuned: [ OK ]

Selected profile is also activated on the system startup. If you are interested, the definitions of all profiles are stored in /etc/tune-profiles/. From personal experience I can say that setting the virtual-host profile at one of our KVM machines has significantly decreased load of one virtualized machine. It’s definetely worth a try.