This article only applies to Mac computers with an Intel processor.
If you need to run high-performance services on a Mac with macOS Server, you can turn on performance mode to dedicate additional system resources for server applications.
OS X El Capitan 10.11 and later
To turn on performance mode in OS X El Capitan 10.11 and later, use the nvram command to adjust the boot-args NVRAM variable. If you reset NVRAM, this setting will be cleared.
This command displays the boot-args NVRAM variable. If you see serverperfmode=1, performance mode has already been turned on.
nvram boot-args
If performance mode hasn't already been turned on, you can enable it by setting serverperfmode=1 in the boot-args NVRAM variable with this command:
sudo nvram boot-args="serverperfmode=1 $(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | cut -f 2-)"
To turn off performance mode, use this command:
sudo nvram boot-args="$(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | sed -e $'s/boot-args\t//;s/serverperfmode=1//')"
Earlier versions of macOS
To turn on performance mode in OS X Mountain Lion, OS X Mavericks or OS X Yosemite, use the serverinfo command in Terminal.
To get the current mode, use the command:
serverinfo --perfmode
To turn on performance mode:
serverinfo --setperfmode 1
To turn off performance mode:
serverinfo --setperfmode 0
Transitioning to or from performance mode will require a restart.
Learn more
If you're a developer and want to find out more about how performance mode can optimise your system for server-specific applications, see the sysctl(3) manual page.