Tips and Tweaks Plugin to possibly improve performance of Unraid and VMs

[Daniel15]

3 minutes ago, dlandon said:

It looks like this applies to the intel_pstate governor only. 

That's right. The plugin could check for the existence of energy_performance_available_preferences (and the values it contains) to determine if it's supported.

 

3 minutes ago, dlandon said:

There are more than two states available on my inel cpu:

I've got the other ones too. In my case at least, I've found "performance" focuses too much on performance (CPUs turbo a lot even when not needed - maybe good for gaming PCs where power saving isn't as important), and "power" focuses too much on power savings. "balance_performance" and "balance_power" are pretty well balanced.

Interesting that performance is the default for you... it was balance_performance for me. It might depend on BIOS settings maybe? I have some of the higher performance options disabled in the BIOS.

Edited September 7 by Daniel15

[dlandon]

I am interested in anything that can save power for Unraid users, especially users in Europe.  I'll have to study this a bit to determine feasability and the best way to implement a feature like this.

[Masterwishx]

i know its not belong to this plugin , but is 

vm.overcommit_memory=1 

is a good idea to use in Unraid as it has warning for Redis and other containers ?

by default is vm.overcommit_memory=0

[BVD]

51 minutes ago, Masterwishx said:

i know its not belong to this plugin , but is 

vm.overcommit_memory=1 

is a good idea to use in Unraid as it has warning for Redis and other containers ?

by default is vm.overcommit_memory=0

 

Not as a default, not in my opinion anyway, as setting this to a value of 1 can be dangerous.

 

The setting itself determines how the OS responds to memory allocation requests from applications, with the options being (take some of this with a grain of salt, been a while):

0 - default, responds to allocation requests via an algorithm to determine how much memory can be allocated based on currently reserved, free, and committed memory. Typically safe.

1 - always  accept any memory allocation request, regardless of (anything)

2 - never overcommit memory (never reserve more memory than actually exists, e.g. fail the allocation request if not enough exists)

 

In a system like unraid where we've no swap by default, setting to 1 could be problematic for some, especially lower memory systems, and should (I feel at least) have *some* kind of consideration from the user prior to making such a change (meaning 'make the user have to set this themselves, so at least they've the chance to consider the implications' lol). There are numerous use cases where it's beneficial to set vm.overcommit_memory=1, just have to be aware of the consequences... Which are potentially crashing your server if unraid attempts to allocate memory for itself (mover running, parity check, file access, etc) when there's not enough available.

 

If you plan to set vm.overcommit_memory to 1, it's important to be more cognizant of system memory utilization, being sure to monitor memory usage more closely than otherwise. I'd also consider setting up the swapfile ('fake it till you make it' ram) if you've any concerns over whether or not you've enough memory to handle all you're running on your server.

[MAM59]

I was wondering if it would be possible to turn the cpu booster feature

On and off per cron/scheduler?

My tests showed a dramatic decrease in CPU Temp and power consumption if turned off. But of course, sometimes you need faster responses so it might be manageble per time like the Gouvernor feature below does.

Could this be added to the plugin?

 

[dlandon]

5 hours ago, MAM59 said:

I was wondering if it would be possible to turn the cpu booster feature

On and off per cron/scheduler?

My tests showed a dramatic decrease in CPU Temp and power consumption if turned off. But of course, sometimes you need faster responses so it might be manageble per time like the Gouvernor feature below does.

Could this be added to the plugin?

 

I have to decide if it makes sense to turn off the boost with the power save cron, or be on it's own cron.  I'm kind of leaning towards its own cron.

[MAM59]

On 12/4/2023 at 1:36 PM, dlandon said:

I'm kind of leaning towards its own cron.

Tnx, already activated it right now 🙂

I think the seperate cron is the correct way to do it because it adds more flexibility.

 

[MAM59]

Hmm... something is wrong, or "mam is too stupid?":

Dec  7 00:00:01 F root: Executing /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/ca.turbo/scripts/turboSchedule.php enable 999999
Dec  7 00:00:01 F root: Warning: Overlapping schedules of CA Auto Turbo Mode Detected

Configured is 23:00 OFF and  06;00 On

So, why does it act on 00:00 ?

And yeah, its overlapping midnight, but what is wrong with this?

 

I set it to 00:00 - 08:00 now and see what happens...

Edited Thursday at 06:35 AM by MAM59

[dlandon]

5 hours ago, MAM59 said:

Hmm... something is wrong, or "mam is too stupid?":

Dec  7 00:00:01 F root: Executing /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/ca.turbo/scripts/turboSchedule.php enable 999999
Dec  7 00:00:01 F root: Warning: Overlapping schedules of CA Auto Turbo Mode Detected

Configured is 23:00 OFF and  06;00 On

So, why does it act on 00:00 ?

And yeah, its overlapping midnight, but what is wrong with this?

 

I set it to 00:00 - 08:00 now and see what happens...

There is something in the new cron tasks that triggers CA Turbo into thinking the schedule for T&T is the CA Turbo schedule and of course it could be seen as an overlapping schedule.

 

I'll have a fix once I know what I need to change.

[dlandon]

On 12/7/2023 at 12:34 AM, MAM59 said:

Hmm... something is wrong, or "mam is too stupid?":

Dec  7 00:00:01 F root: Executing /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/ca.turbo/scripts/turboSchedule.php enable 999999
Dec  7 00:00:01 F root: Warning: Overlapping schedules of CA Auto Turbo Mode Detected

Configured is 23:00 OFF and  06;00 On

So, why does it act on 00:00 ?

And yeah, its overlapping midnight, but what is wrong with this?

 

I set it to 00:00 - 08:00 now and see what happens...

I think your issue is that you've set a time value for turbo mode to be on for 999999 minutes which is way over a day (1440 minutes).

[MAM59]

8 hours ago, dlandon said:

I think your issue is that you've set a time value for turbo mode to be on for 999999 minutes which is way over a day (1440 minutes).

I never used 999999 anywhere (btw: WHERE? you can only set start and end time and feature on or off).

They come somewhere deep outside your plugin. A miscalculation?

 

Since I've used 00:00 to 08:00 there are no message in syslog about this anymore (no message from the plugin at all?)

My educated guess would be that you just subtract the times and do not count in the time wrap.

23:00 - 07:00 should give 420mins.