Tuning Linux systems for IBM Storage Protect server performance

There are a number of actions that can improve performance for an IBM® Storage 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.
  Important: The vm.pagecache_limit_mb kernel parameter is deprecated for the following versions of Linux operating systems:

  • Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 8.1 or later RHEL 8 levels
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 or later RHEL 7 levels
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15, SP1 or later SLES 15 levels

  For the earlier versions of the RHEL and SUSE Linux systems, set the vm.pagecache_limit_mb parameter value to 0.
  Linux systems can cache much file system data, which can take away memory that is needed for IBM Storage 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=0   # 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.