Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.

0 Beta

Monitoring and managing system status and

performance

Optimizing system throughput, latency, and power consumption

Last Updated: 2019-01-11

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status
and performance
Optimizing system throughput, latency, and power consumption
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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.
 Table of Contents

Table of Contents
. . . . . IS
THIS . .A
. . BETA
. . . . . .VERSION!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . FEEDBACK
PROVIDING . . . . . . . . . . .ON
. . .RED
. . . . HAT
. . . . DOCUMENTATION
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .1.. .GETTING
CHAPTER . . . . . . . . STARTED
. . . . . . . . . WITH
. . . . . TUNED
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6. . . . . . . . . .
1.1. THE PURPOSE OF TUNED 6
1.2. TUNED PROFILES 6
The default profile 6
Merged profiles 7
The location of profiles 7
The syntax of profile configuration 7
Additional resources 8
1.3. TUNED PROFILES DISTRIBUTED WITH RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX 8
Profiles for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 9
Real-time profiles 9
1.4. STATIC AND DYNAMIC TUNING IN TUNED 10
1.5. TUNED NO-DAEMON MODE 10
1.6. INSTALLING AND ENABLING TUNED 11
Procedure 11
1.7. LISTING AVAILABLE TUNED PROFILES 11
Procedure 11
Additional resources 12
1.8. SETTING A TUNED PROFILE 12
Prerequisites 12
Procedure 12
Additional resources 13
1.9. DISABLING TUNED 13
Procedure 13
Additional resources 13
1.10. RELATED INFORMATION 13

.CHAPTER
. . . . . . . . .2.. .CUSTOMIZING
. . . . . . . . . . . . .TUNED
. . . . . . .PROFILES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
...........
2.1. PREREQUISITES 14
2.2. TUNED PROFILES 14
The default profile 14
Merged profiles 14
The location of profiles 15
The syntax of profile configuration 15
Additional resources 15
2.3. INHERITANCE BETWEEN TUNED PROFILES 15
Additional resources 16
2.4. STATIC AND DYNAMIC TUNING IN TUNED 16
2.5. TUNED PLUG-INS 17
Monitoring plug-ins 17
Tuning plug-ins 17
Syntax for plug-ins in Tuned profiles 17
Short plug-in syntax 18
Conflicting plug-in definitions in a profile 18
Functionality not implemented in any plug-in 19
Additional resources 19
2.6. AVAILABLE TUNED PLUG-INS 19
Monitoring plug-ins 19

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status and performance

Tuning plug-ins 19
2.7. VARIABLES AND BUILT-IN FUNCTIONS IN TUNED PROFILES 22
Variables 22
Functions 23
Additional resources 23
2.8. BUILT-IN FUNCTIONS AVAILABLE IN TUNED PROFILES 24
2.9. CREATING NEW TUNED PROFILES 25
Prerequisites 25
Procedure 25
Additional resources 25
2.10. MODIFYING EXISTING TUNED PROFILES 26
Prerequisites 26
Procedure 26
Additional resources 27
2.11. RELATED INFORMATION 27

2
Table of Contents

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status and performance

THIS IS A BETA VERSION!

Thank you for your interest in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta. Be aware that:

Beta code should not be used with production data or on production systems.

Beta does not include a guarantee of support.

Feedback and bug reports are welcome. Discussions with your account representative, partner
contact, and Technical Account Manager (TAM) are also welcome.

Upgrades to or from a Beta are not supported or recommended.

4
 PROVIDING FEEDBACK ON RED HAT DOCUMENTATION

PROVIDING FEEDBACK ON RED HAT DOCUMENTATION

We appreciate your input on our documentation. Please let us know how we could make it better. To do
so:

For simple comments on specific passages, make sure you are viewing the documentation in
the Multi-page HTML format. Highlight the part of text that you want to comment on. Then, click
the Add Feedback pop-up that appears below the highlighted text, and follow the displayed
instructions.

For submitting more complex feedback, create a Bugzilla ticket:

1. Go to the Bugzilla website.

2. As the Component, use Documentation.

3. Fill in the Description field with your suggestion for improvement. Include a link to the
relevant part(s) of documentation.

4. Click Submit Bug.

5
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status and performance

CHAPTER 1. GETTING STARTED WITH TUNED

As a system administrator, you can use the Tuned service 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- The best throughput performance

performance

6
 CHAPTER 1. GETTING STARTED WITH TUNED

Environment Default profile Goal

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

7
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status and performance

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 RED HAT ENTERPRISE

LINUX
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

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 CHAPTER 1. GETTING STARTED WITH TUNED

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.

Profiles for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host

Profiles optimized for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host are provided by the tuned-profiles-
atomic package. The Tuned profiles for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host are:

atomic-host
A profile optimized for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host, when used as a host system on a bare-
metal server, based on the throughput-performance profile. It additionally increases SELinux
AVC cache, PID limit, and tunes netfilter connections tracking.
atomic-guest
A profile optimized for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host, when used as a guest system based on
the virtual-guest profile. It additionally increases SELinux AVC cache, PID limit, and tunes
netfilter connections tracking.

Use the atomic-host profile on physical machines, and the atomic-guest profile on virtual
machines.

Real-time profiles
The following real-time profiles are available:

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status and performance

realtime
Available from the tuned-profiles-realtime package.
realtime-virtual-host and realtime-virtual-guest
Available from the tuned-profiles-nfv package.

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.

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 CHAPTER 1. GETTING STARTED WITH TUNED

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 service, installs Tuned profiles, and presets a default
Tuned profile for your system.

Procedure

1. Install the tuned package:

# yum install tuned

2. Enable and start the tuned service:

# systemctl enable --now tuned

3. Optionally, install Tuned profiles for real-time systems or for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic
Host:

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

tuned-profiles-atomic

4. 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:

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status and performance

$ 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

1. Optionally, you can let Tuned recommend the most suitable profile for your system:

# tuned-adm recommend

balanced

2. Activate a profile:

# tuned-adm profile selected-profile

Alternatively, you can activate a combination of multiple profiles:

# tuned-adm profile profile1 profile2

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 CHAPTER 1. GETTING STARTED WITH TUNED

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

3. 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.

1.10. RELATED INFORMATION

The tuned(8) man page

The tuned-adm(8) man page

The Tuned project website: https://tuned-project.org/

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status and performance

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- The best throughput performance

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.

14
 CHAPTER 2. CUSTOMIZING TUNED PROFILES

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

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.

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

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status and performance

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.
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 2.3. Static and dynamic tuning on a workstation

16
 CHAPTER 2. CUSTOMIZING TUNED PROFILES

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.

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

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Beta Monitoring and managing system status and performance

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.

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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.

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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.

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mounts
Enables or disables barriers for mounts according to the Boolean value of the disable_barriers
option.
script
Can be used for the execution of an external script that is run when the profile is loaded or unloaded.
The script is called by one argument which can be start or stop, depending on whether the script is
called during the profile load or unload. The script file name can be specified by the script
parameter.

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

The functions Bash helper script is installed by default and enables you to import and use various
functions defined in it.

Note that this plug-in is provided mainly for backwards compatibility, and it is recommended that you
use it as the last resort and prefer other plug-ins if they cover the required settings.

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

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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 2.6. 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}

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Example 2.7. 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 2.8. 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

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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.

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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

1. 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

2. 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

3. To activate the profile, use:

# tuned-adm profile my-profile

4. 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

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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

1. 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

2. 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.

3. Include your profile modifications.

Example 2.9. 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

4. To activate the profile, use:

# tuned-adm profile modified-profile

5. 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.

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Additional resources

The tuned.conf(5) man page

2.11. RELATED INFORMATION

The tuned.conf(5) man page

The Tuned project website: https://tuned-project.org/

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