Is it fine if I change the JVM process priority through nice at server machine [linux]. I wanted my JVM process to use maximum resources from OS.
What is the standard practice? Do people tune the linux OS specifically for a process to get maximum performance?
The normal fair share approach work well for most work loads, and it is not common to tune priorities for performance. Tuning process priorities can have undesirable side-effects. There are cases, such as batch processes, where applications are specifically niced.
You will need root privileges to give the JVM higher than normal priority. This might be acceptable if the process is I/O bound. If the process is CPU bound, you may find it kills performance on ALL other processes. This will include the process you used to up the priority.
It is common to nice batch processes, so they don't use resources which might be used by interactive processes. The CPU speed monitors can be be set to ignore such processes when determining if CPU speed should be increased. If batch processes are niced, this is typically done in the script running the process.
Modern kernels also allow you to set IO priorities for processes. Check man ionice. If your JVM is IO bound this might be appropriate.
I do run my boinc processs extremely niced. This is because I only want to use CPU cycles which would otherwise be unused for these processes. They typically uses over 90% of the available cycles.
Setting a favourable 'nice' level will give that process priority CPU time over other processes. You will only be able to burst out to a certain "performance" based on how powerful your CPU is.
