using TrueNas tunables on FreeNas?

SMnasMAN

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Joined
Dec 2, 2018
Messages
177
I was watching an excellent YT video review from Nov. 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgyYU6wuIgk) of a Truenas X10 system (wow, really nice HW/system, dual MB Xeon-D 1531 (dual node) 2u system running HA), and the reviewer showed the page with the systems Tunables.
TN_tunables_Video_ScreenShot.JPG

Im personally still at the testing / messing with FN phase (ie no real data yet), and the 2 or 3 times ive tried some forum suggested tunables it caused issues (and was really difficult to reverse/undo the tunables, esp. when they block web gui ha!). So personally ive decided NOT to run any tuanbles up to now, and all the reading i have done here has suggested that as of recent FN versions, tunables (and esp. autotune) should not be used, and often does not offer any benefit over stock defaults.

however if there is one "list" of tunables that should be considered, i would think its a list used by truenas / ixsys. (im aware they often customize installs for the specific customers), but does anyone have any thoughts on running some of these specific tunables on a recent FN release?

(ie I would only be considering the ones relevant to my setup, which still is in testing phase. ie i dont have l2arc, and do have 256g ram vs 32g in this ixsys truenas box).

I have marked the stock FreeNAS-11.2-U3 tunables that differ with a red mark (ie this is what a fresh/default FreeNAS-11.2-U3 settings look like vs the tuanbles on the reviewer's system which was running TRUENAS 11.0 u2.2)
VS_FN_Stock.JPG
*i did notice the screenshot shows "generated by autotune"

Im running high-end + forums suggested hardware, and the only slight disappointment i have had is in terms of performance over 10g (even with all ssd "test" stripes), so if i do test out any of these tunables i will report back here with before/after results. Im mainly looking for any input on these from those more knowledgeable in FN, than I. thanks!
 
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
926
Its a great question so thanks for raising it. I'd be interested to see what other people have to say but very much like you, I've always got the feeling from within the forums that you should keep away from tunables as much as possible and especially autotune.

However, saying that I did recently purchase a TrueNAS and by default it came with autotune enabled and therefore had quite a lot of tunables set by autotune.

My general thought is perhaps autotune is a good idea if your hardware/config very closely resembles that of iX's TrueNAS or even perhaps their certified FreeNAS systems. However if not then perhaps things can end bad as autotune might make some assumptions on hardware/config.

Having said that I don't have autotune enabled on any of my production servers and don't plan on doing anytime soon as they are working just fine.
 
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