Poor performance running Hadoop on RHEL 6.2 or later when transparent hugepage compaction is enabled

RHEL 6.2 and 6.3 include a feature called "transparent hugepage compaction" which interacts poorly with Hadoop workloads. This can cause a serious performance regression compared to other operating system versions on the same hardware.

Symptom: top and other system monitoring tools show a large percentage of the CPU usage classified as "system CPU". If system CPU usage is 30% or more of the total CPU usage, your system may be experiencing this issue.

Bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=805593
Severity: Medium (up to 3x performance loss)
Anticipated Resolution: Currently working with Red Hat to resolve for a future RHEL update
Workaround: Add the following command to /etc/rc.local to disable transparent hugepage compaction:

解决方法：

echo always > /sys/kernel/mm/redhat_transparent_hugepage/enabled

echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/redhat_transparent_hugepage/defrag