Tuning Linux systems for IBM Spectrum Protect server performance

There are a number of actions that can improve performance for an IBM Spectrum® Protect server that is running in a Linux® environment.

• Most enterprise distributions come with many features, however most of the time only a small subset of these features are used. Disable features that are not used.
• Use the vm.pagecache_limit_mb and vm.swappiness options to release memory from the file system cache.
  Linux systems can cache much file system data, which can take away memory that is needed for IBM Spectrum Protect server and Db2® processes. As a root user on Linux, you can limit the amount of memory that is allowed for caching file data by setting the vm.pagecache_limit_mb kernel parameter to 1024. Also, set the vm.swappiness kernel parameter to 5. For example:

  linuxbox:/ # sysctl vm.pagecache_limit_mb           # to display current value
  vm.pagecache_limit_mb = 0                           # (0 means no limit)
  linuxbox:/ # sysctl -w vm.pagecache_limit_mb=1024   # to change at runtime
  vm.pagecache_limit_mb = 1024
  linuxbox:/ # sysctl vm.swappiness
  vm.swappiness = 60
  linuxbox:/ # sysctl -w vm.swappiness=0
  vm.swappiness = 5

  To apply these changes for all restarts of the operating system, edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and add vm.pagecache_limit_mb=1024 and vm.swappiness=5.