UNIX System Performance Tuning

IMPORTANT: Make sure you back up configuration files before you make any changes to configuration files.

Name Servers

You can increase system performance by deploying a caching name server on the servers on which the DGE components operate.

On Solaris platforms, you can run NCSD with the following parameters:

positive-time-to-live hosts 10800

keep-hot-count hosts 200

check-files hosts no

check-files ipnodes no

check-files exec_attr no

check_files prof_attr no

check_files user_attr no

Disk I/O

If you are using IDE drives, you can increase I/O performance by enabling 32bit I/O, direct memory access and multi-block reads by entering:

hdparm -c1 -d1 -m16 /dev/hda

Make sure to replace /dev/hda with the correct device name appropriate for your system. Add this command to /etc/rc.local.

Increasing the File Descriptors

1. Increase the file descriptors to 8192 by adding the following parameters to the /etc/security/limits.conf file.

* soft nofile 8192
* hard nofile 8192

1. Edit the /etc/pam.d/login file, and add the following:

session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so

1. Increase the system-wide file descriptor limit by adding the following three lines to the /etc/rc.d/rc.local startup script:

# Increase system-wide file descriptor limit.
echo 4096 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
echo 16384 > /proc/sys/fs/inode-max

Increasing Java Virtual Memory (JVM) Size

The DGE, BVE ObjectStore, and Web Application operate as separate processes and have their own Java Virtual Memory settings. If you add additional RAM on servers hosting DGEs, Kaseya recommends that you increase the JVM size that the DGEs use.

Increasing the JVM Size

1. Shut down the DGE.
   <TRAVERSE_HOME>/etc/monitor.init stop
2. Edit <TRAVERSE_HOME>/etc/monitor.init and search for Xmx1024. Replace this value with Xmx1536. This adds an additional 512MB of memory for the DGE process.
3. Save and close the monitor.init file.

   Make sure you always dedicate physical memory (RAM) to the java process, and not swap space. For example, if you have 2GB of swap space, but only 512MB of RAM, set the JVM size to less than 512MB (do not set it to 2GB).

System Security Issues

Kaseya strongly recommends that you terminate or disable all unnecessary daemons and processes on the Traverse servers. This includes telnet and ftp.

Use ssh if you need to log in to the Traverse server and scp for all file transfers. See Using Traverse Behind Firewalls for more information about firewalls.