====== HW node environment tuning ======

This page describes how to improve the performance of an OpenVZ system.

===== Disable unnecessary services =====

Disable all default services that you do not need to use and then reboot your host.

For example, the **audit** daemon can significantly decrease performance of linux kernel system calls (up to ~<wrap em>20%</wrap>) even if you do not use any audit rules, or even if you just stopped this service without host reboot!

To setup default services, use
<code>chkconfig</code> or <code>ntsysv</code> in RedHat, or <code>rc-update</code> in Gentoo, <code>update-rc.d</code> on Debian and Ubuntu

===== Shell scripts performance improvement =====

To improve performance of small shell scripts, which spends a lot of time starting the shell binary itself (like the shell scripts test from the [http://www.tux.org/pub/tux/niemi/unixbench/ unixbench] package), you can set your **LANG** environment variable to **"C"**.

To see current settings, type

  # locale

If you want to change it only for the current shell session, do:

  # export LANG=C

If you want to change the default value, modify the **/etc/default/locale** file.

  # nano /etc/default/locale

<file bash>
#LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LANG="C"
</file>

If your default **LANG** environment variable was set to something like **en_US.UTF-8**, you can reduce shell (bash) startup time up to ~<wrap em>15%</wrap> with **LANG=C**.