4.5. Custom tuning specification
The custom resource (CR) for the Operator has two major sections. The first section, profile:
, is a list of Tuned profiles and their names. The second, recommend:
, defines the profile selection logic.
Multiple custom tuning specifications can co-exist as multiple CRs in the Operator’s namespace. The existence of new CRs or the deletion of old CRs is detected by the Operator. All existing custom tuning specifications are merged and appropriate objects for the containerized Tuned daemons are updated.
Profile data
The profile:
section lists Tuned profiles and their names.
profile: - name: tuned_profile_1 data: | # Tuned profile specification [main] summary=Description of tuned_profile_1 profile [sysctl] net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 # ... other sysctl's or other Tuned daemon plug-ins supported by the containerized Tuned # ... - name: tuned_profile_n data: | # Tuned profile specification [main] summary=Description of tuned_profile_n profile # tuned_profile_n profile settings
Recommended profiles
The profile:
selection logic is defined by the recommend:
section of the CR. The recommend:
section is a list of items to recommend the profiles based on a selection criteria.
recommend: <recommend-item-1> # ... <recommend-item-n>
The individual items of the list:
- machineConfigLabels: 1 <mcLabels> 2 match: 3 <match> 4 priority: <priority> 5 profile: <tuned_profile_name> 6
- 1
- Optional.
- 2
- A dictionary of key/value
MachineConfig
labels. The keys must be unique. - 3
- If omitted, profile match is assumed unless a profile with a higher priority matches first or
machineConfigLabels
is set. - 4
- An optional list.
- 5
- Profile ordering priority. Lower numbers mean higher priority (
0
is the highest priority). - 6
- A Tuned profile to apply on a match. For example
tuned_profile_1
.
<match>
is an optional list recursively defined as follows:
- label: <label_name> 1 value: <label_value> 2 type: <label_type> 3 <match> 4
If <match>
is not omitted, all nested <match>
sections must also evaluate to true
. Otherwise, false
is assumed and the profile with the respective <match>
section will not be applied or recommended. Therefore, the nesting (child <match>
sections) works as logical AND operator. Conversely, if any item of the <match>
list matches, the entire <match>
list evaluates to true
. Therefore, the list acts as logical OR operator.
If machineConfigLabels
is defined, machine config pool based matching is turned on for the given recommend:
list item. <mcLabels>
specifies the labels for a machine config. The machine config is created automatically to apply host settings, such as kernel boot parameters, for the profile <tuned_profile_name>
. This involves finding all machine config pools with machine config selector matching <mcLabels>
and setting the profile <tuned_profile_name>
on all nodes that match the machine config pools' node selectors.
The list items match
and machineConfigLabels
are connected by the logical OR operator. The match
item is evaluated first in a short-circuit manner. Therefore, if it evaluates to true
, the machineConfigLabels
item is not considered.
When using machine config pool based matching, it is advised to group nodes with the same hardware configuration into the same machine config pool. Not following this practice might result in Tuned operands calculating conflicting kernel parameters for two or more nodes sharing the same machine config pool.
Example: node or pod label based matching
- match: - label: tuned.openshift.io/elasticsearch match: - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/master - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/infra type: pod priority: 10 profile: openshift-control-plane-es - match: - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/master - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/infra priority: 20 profile: openshift-control-plane - priority: 30 profile: openshift-node
The CR above is translated for the containerized Tuned daemon into its recommend.conf
file based on the profile priorities. The profile with the highest priority (10
) is openshift-control-plane-es
and, therefore, it is considered first. The containerized Tuned daemon running on a given node looks to see if there is a pod running on the same node with the tuned.openshift.io/elasticsearch
label set. If not, the entire <match>
section evaluates as false
. If there is such a pod with the label, in order for the <match>
section to evaluate to true
, the node label also needs to be node-role.kubernetes.io/master
or node-role.kubernetes.io/infra
.
If the labels for the profile with priority 10
matched, openshift-control-plane-es
profile is applied and no other profile is considered. If the node/pod label combination did not match, the second highest priority profile (openshift-control-plane
) is considered. This profile is applied if the containerized Tuned pod runs on a node with labels node-role.kubernetes.io/master
or node-role.kubernetes.io/infra
.
Finally, the profile openshift-node
has the lowest priority of 30
. It lacks the <match>
section and, therefore, will always match. It acts as a profile catch-all to set openshift-node
profile, if no other profile with higher priority matches on a given node.

Example: machine config pool based matching
apiVersion: tuned.openshift.io/v1 kind: Tuned metadata: name: openshift-node-custom namespace: openshift-cluster-node-tuning-operator spec: profile: - data: | [main] summary=Custom OpenShift node profile with an additional kernel parameter include=openshift-node [bootloader] cmdline_openshift_node_custom=+skew_tick=1 name: openshift-node-custom recommend: - machineConfigLabels: machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: "worker-custom" priority: 20 profile: openshift-node-custom
To minimize node reboots, label the target nodes with a label the machine config pool’s node selector will match, then create the Tuned CR above and finally create the custom machine config pool itself.