VFS sysctl tuning

[Robert Watson]

On Sat, 12 Aug 2006, Nikolas Britton wrote:

> After reading man tuning it said to change vfs.hirunningspace to a larger 
> value. What should I set it to?
>
> My RAID controller, an Areca ARC-1220, has a 256MB cache and each disk has 
> 16MB of cache.
>
> What other vfs.* sysctls can I change?

The default settings are "reasonable" for many common workloads.  Further 
tuning generally should be done in the context of a specific workload, since 
tuning generally means trading off one type of performance or functionality 
for another.  Only by knowing the workload can we talk about how to trade off 
what you need, and what you don't.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge