Thread

  1. Distributing data over "spindles" even on AWS EBS, (followup to the work queue saga)

    Gunther <raj@gusw.net> — 2019-03-13T18:44:10Z

    Hello again. You may remember my queue issue for which some of you have 
    proposed to use a partitioned table approach. I have done that, and I 
    might report more on that once I have this beast all tamed, which may be 
    now. Let's say in short, it definitely helped immensely. My test case 
    now is different from what I had previously done. I am now hammering my 
    database with 52 worker threads uploading like crazy into some 100 
    tables and indexes.
    
    Right now I want to remind everybody of the surprising fact that the old 
    wisdom of distributing load over "spindles" appears to be still true 
    even in the virtualized world of cloud computing. For background, this 
    is running on Amazon AWS, the db server is a c5.xlarge and you see I 
    have 0.0 st, because my virtual CPUs are dedicated.
    
    I had run into a situation which was totally crazy. Here I show you a 
    snapshot of top and iostat output as it ran all night with totally low tps.
    
    top - 12:43:42 up 1 day,  9:29,  3 users,  load average: 41.03, 39.58, 38.91
    Tasks: 385 total,   1 running, 169 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
    %Cpu(s):  2.9 us,  0.9 sy,  0.0 ni,  5.9 id, 90.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.1 si,  0.0 st
    KiB Mem :  7809760 total,   130528 free,   948504 used,  6730728 buff/cache
    KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 free,        0 used.  4357496 avail Mem
    
       PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
    20839 postgres  20   0 2309448  86892  83132 D   1.0  1.1   0:00.04 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(44862) SELECT
    17230 postgres  20   0 2318736   1.7g   1.7g D   0.7 23.0   0:10.00 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(44458) SELECT
    19209 postgres  20   0 2318760   1.7g   1.7g D   0.7 22.7   0:04.89 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(44421) SELECT
    19467 postgres  20   0 2318160   1.8g   1.8g D   0.7 23.6   0:04.20 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(56981) INSERT
    19990 postgres  20   0 2318084   1.2g   1.2g D   0.7 16.1   0:02.12 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(50413) SELECT
    20004 postgres  20   0 2317924 863460 853052 D   0.7 11.1   0:02.10 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(21895) INSERT
    20555 postgres  20   0 2316952 899376 890260 D   0.7 11.5   0:00.65 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(60209) INSERT
    20786 postgres  20   0 2312208 736224 729528 D   0.7  9.4   0:00.22 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(48175) INSERT
    18709 postgres  20   0 2318780   1.9g   1.8g D   0.3 24.9   0:06.18 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(17281) SELECT
    19228 postgres  20   0 2318940   1.7g   1.7g D   0.3 22.4   0:04.63 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(63850) INSERT
    19457 postgres  20   0 2318028   1.1g   1.1g D   0.3 15.0   0:03.69 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(33298) INSERT
    19656 postgres  20   0 2318080   1.3g   1.3g D   0.3 18.1   0:02.90 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(23307) INSERT
    19723 postgres  20   0 2317948   1.3g   1.2g D   0.3 16.8   0:02.17 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(44744) SELECT
    20034 postgres  20   0 2318044 927200 916924 D   0.3 11.9   0:02.19 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(64385) SELECT
    20080 postgres  20   0 2318124   1.2g   1.2g D   0.3 15.6   0:01.90 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(23430) INSERT
    20264 postgres  20   0 2317824   1.0g   1.0g D   0.3 13.9   0:01.28 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(64347) INSERT
    20285 postgres  20   0 2318096 582712 572456 D   0.3  7.5   0:01.08 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(34511) INSERT
    20392 root      20   0       0      0      0 I   0.3  0.0   0:00.05 [kworker/u8:1]
    19954 postgres  20   0 2317848   1.2g   1.2g D   0.3 15.8   0:01.95 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(65080) SELECT
    20004 postgres  20   0 2317924 863460 853052 D   0.3 11.1   0:02.08 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(21895) INSERT
    20034 postgres  20   0 2318044 923876 913600 D   0.3 11.8   0:02.18 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(64385) SELECT
    20080 postgres  20   0 2318124   1.2g   1.1g D   0.3 15.6   0:01.89 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(23430) SELECT
    20248 postgres  20   0 2318312 598416 587972 D   0.3  7.7   0:01.14 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(44375) SELECT
    20264 postgres  20   0 2317824   1.0g   1.0g D   0.3 13.9   0:01.27 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(64347) INSERT
    20350 postgres  20   0 2318228 546652 536396 D   0.3  7.0   0:00.87 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(60787) INSERT
    20590 postgres  20   0 2317208 893232 883840 D   0.3 11.4   0:00.61 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(14003) INSERT
    20595 postgres  20   0 2317172 884792 875428 D   0.3 11.3   0:00.59 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(59843) INSERT
    20603 postgres  20   0 2316596 838408 829668 D   0.3 10.7   0:00.50 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(16697) INSERT
    20770 postgres  20   0  171388   4456   3628 R   0.3  0.1   0:00.13 top -c
    
    you can see here that all these postgress processes are in 
    "non-interruptible sleep" (D) state. CPU% is ridiculously low (and 
    that's not because of steal, c5 instances do not run on "CPU credits"). 
    Are they all in IO blocked state? Let's see iostat:
    
    avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle2.51 0.00 0.75 94.99 
    0.00 1.75Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rkB/s wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz 
    await r_await w_await svctm %utilnvme1n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme2n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme3n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme4n1 0.00 0.00 1.00 5.00 8.00 27.50 
    11.83 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme8n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme9n1 0.00 0.00 91.00 2.00 3040.00 
    3.00 65.44 0.00 0.65 0.66 0.00 0.04 0.40nvme11n1 0.00 2.00 0.00 24.00 
    0.00 1090.00 90.83 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme10n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme6n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme7n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme12n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme5n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme16n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme15n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    2.00 0.00 1.50 1.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme13n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme14n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme17n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme18n1 0.00 0.00 
    194.00 133.00 1896.00 3253.50 31.50 6.90 23.27 31.18 11.73 2.46 
    80.40nvme19n1 0.00 0.00 6.00 13.00 48.00 355.50 42.47 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00nvme20n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00nvme21n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00nvme22n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00nvme23n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00nvme0n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 7.00 0.00 69.50 19.86 0.00 0.00 
    0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
    
    You see that I already did a lot to balance IO out to many different 
    tablespaces that's why there are so many volumes. Yet my iowait % was at 
     > 95%. I though all my user data was spread out over the tablespaces, 
    so that I could control the IO contention. But there remained a crazy 
    hotspot on this nvme18n1 volume. And it turns out that was the data/base 
    default tablespace, and that I had failed to actually assign proper 
    tablespaces to many of the tables.
    
    Now I brought the server to a maintenance halt killing and blocking all 
    the worker threads from connecting again during the move, and then did 
    the tablespace move.
    
    ALTER DATABASE integrator CONNECTION LIMIT 0;
    SELECT pg_terminate_backend(pid)
       FROM pg_stat_activity
      WHERE datname = 'integrator'
        AND pid <> pg_backend_pid()
        AND backend_type = 'client backend';
    ALTER TABLE integrator.... SET TABLESPACE ...;
    ...
    ALTER TABLE integrator.... SET TABLESPACE ...;
    ALTER DATABASE integrator CONNECTION LIMIT -1;
    
    And then look at what this helped:
    
    avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
               38.90    0.00   10.47   13.97    0.00   36.66
    
    Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
    nvme1n1           0.00     0.00    9.00   37.00    72.00   296.00    16.00     0.00    0.52    0.44    0.54   0.00   0.00
    nvme2n1           0.00     0.00  129.00  467.00  1152.00  4152.00    17.80     0.13    0.47    0.25    0.53   0.18  10.80
    nvme3n1           0.00     0.00    8.00   38.00    64.00   304.00    16.00     0.00    0.61    0.50    0.63   0.00   0.00
    nvme4n1           0.00     0.00    8.00   43.00    64.00   344.00    16.00     0.00    0.47    0.00    0.56   0.00   0.00
    nvme8n1           0.00     0.00  326.00 1104.00  3452.00 10248.00    19.16     0.56    0.58    0.39    0.64   0.15  20.80
    nvme9n1           0.00     0.00   29.00   71.00   232.00   568.00    16.00     0.00    0.64    0.41    0.73   0.00   0.00
    nvme11n1          0.00     0.00    0.00  193.00     0.00 37720.00   390.88     0.66    4.15    0.00    4.15   0.58  11.20
    nvme10n1          0.00     0.00  185.00  281.00  1560.00  2264.00    16.41     0.06    0.51    0.58    0.46   0.10   4.80
    nvme6n1           0.00     0.00   14.00  137.00   112.00  1096.00    16.00     0.00    0.42    0.00    0.47   0.03   0.40
    nvme7n1           0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
    nvme12n1          0.00     0.00  267.00  584.00  2656.00  4864.00    17.67     0.23    0.53    0.54    0.53   0.19  16.40
    nvme5n1           0.00     0.00   22.00   14.00   176.00   112.00    16.00     0.00    0.78    1.09    0.29   0.00   0.00
    nvme16n1          0.00     0.00   75.00  179.00   732.00  1432.00    17.04     0.01    0.55    0.32    0.65   0.05   1.20
    nvme15n1          0.00     0.00    0.00   16.00     0.00   128.00    16.00     0.00    1.25    0.00    1.25   0.00   0.00
    nvme13n1          0.00     0.00  185.00  631.00  1804.00  5904.00    18.89     0.21    0.47    0.28    0.53   0.16  13.20
    nvme14n1          0.00     0.00  141.00  227.00  1128.00  1816.00    16.00     0.02    0.48    0.57    0.42   0.05   2.00
    nvme17n1          0.00     0.00   69.00  250.00   704.00  2000.00    16.95     0.00    0.44    0.41    0.45   0.00   0.00
    nvme18n1          0.00     0.00    9.00    9.00    72.00    72.00    16.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
    nvme19n1          0.00     0.00  137.00  294.00  1576.00  3088.00    21.64     0.07    0.56    0.82    0.44   0.14   6.00
    nvme20n1          0.00     0.00  191.00  693.00  1796.00  6336.00    18.40     0.37    0.65    0.44    0.70   0.20  18.00
    nvme21n1          0.00     0.00   90.00  140.00   856.00  1120.00    17.18     0.01    0.56    0.36    0.69   0.05   1.20
    nvme22n1          0.00     0.00  426.00  859.00  4016.00  7272.00    17.57     0.40    0.54    0.60    0.52   0.14  18.40
    nvme23n1          0.00     0.00  512.00  916.00  5076.00 10288.00    21.52     0.50    0.53    0.36    0.63   0.12  17.20
    nvme0n1           0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
    
    And top:
    
    top - 18:08:13 up 1 day, 14:54, 10 users,  load average: 4.89, 6.09, 4.93
    Tasks: 395 total,   4 running, 161 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
    %Cpu(s): 55.6 us,  8.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 18.9 id, 14.2 wa,  0.0 hi,  2.4 si,  0.0 st
    KiB Mem :  7809760 total,   136320 free,   610204 used,  7063236 buff/cache
    KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 free,        0 used.  4693632 avail Mem
    
       PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
    13601 postgres  20   0 2319104   1.9g   1.9g S  40.2 25.9   0:18.76 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(15235) idle
    13606 postgres  20   0 2318832   1.6g   1.6g S  18.6 21.7   0:14.25 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(49226) idle i+
    13760 postgres  20   0 2318772   1.7g   1.7g S  17.6 23.4   0:11.09 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.57.147(45312) idle i+
    13600 postgres  20   0 2318892   1.9g   1.9g R  15.6 26.1   0:20.08 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(63958) BIND
    13603 postgres  20   0 2318480   1.8g   1.8g S  15.3 24.0   0:22.72 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.57.147(23817) idle i+
    13714 postgres  20   0 2318640   1.8g   1.8g S  15.3 24.0   0:10.99 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(58893) idle in+
    13607 postgres  20   0 2318748   1.9g   1.9g S  14.6 25.8   0:19.59 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.57.147(11889) idle
    13844 postgres  20   0 2318260 730388 719972 S  13.0  9.4   0:02.03 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(58949) idle i+
    13716 postgres  20   0 2318816   1.8g   1.8g S  12.3 24.2   0:11.94 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(53131) idle in+
    13717 postgres  20   0 2318752   1.6g   1.6g S  10.3 21.0   0:13.39 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(19934) idle in+
    13837 postgres  20   0 2318296 805832 795380 S  10.3 10.3   0:02.28 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(63185) idle i+
    13839 postgres  20   0 2317956 722788 712532 S  10.3  9.3   0:02.04 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(57414) idle i+
    13836 postgres  20   0 2318188 697716 687224 R  10.0  8.9   0:02.09 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(51576) INSERT
    13846 postgres  20   0 2317716   1.3g   1.3g S  10.0 17.0   0:02.19 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(16349) idle i+
    13854 postgres  20   0 2313504 224276 216592 S   7.3  2.9   0:00.42 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(18867) idle i+
    18055 postgres  20   0 2308060   2.1g   2.1g S   7.0 27.6   3:04.07 postgres: checkpointer
    13602 postgres  20   0 2319160   1.8g   1.8g S   6.6 23.9   0:21.21 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(45183) idle i+
    13833 postgres  20   0 2317848 879168 869312 S   6.0 11.3   0:02.90 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(47892) idle i+
    13710 postgres  20   0 2318856   1.4g   1.4g S   5.6 19.3   0:09.89 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(22184) idle in+
    13809 postgres  20   0 2318168   1.1g   1.1g D   4.7 14.4   0:04.94 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(44808) SELECT
    13843 postgres  20   0 2318276 595844 585432 S   4.0  7.6   0:01.36 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(39820) idle i+
    13860 postgres  20   0 2311872 139372 133356 R   3.7  1.8   0:00.11 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(57420) idle i+
       462 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   1.7  0.0   1:41.44 [kswapd0]
    13859 postgres  20   0 2308104  96788  93884 S   1.7  1.2   0:00.05 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(43391) idle i+
    18057 postgres  20   0 2305108  19108  18624 S   1.7  0.2   1:26.62 postgres: walwriter
      1559 root       0 -20       0      0      0 I   0.3  0.0   0:19.21 [kworker/1:1H]
      1560 root       0 -20       0      0      0 I   0.3  0.0   0:25.19 [kworker/3:1H]
      2619 root      20   0   13144    400    292 S   0.3  0.0   0:28.52 /sbin/rngd -f
    
    This helped!
    
    There is a nice saturation now of CPU at the high end of the "linear" 
    range, i.e., we aren't in the distortion range or >90% and yet all 
    workers are runn
    
    I can do 17 transactions per second with 52 parallel worker threads. Now 
    we have not run yet for over an hour but so far so good. With my old 
    non-partitioned work queue table I would have long run into the index 
    degradation.
    
    I am not sure my autovacuum setup is working right though. I wonder if 
    there isn't some autovacuum statistics which I can query that would give 
    me confidence that it is actually running?
    
    Finally the last question for now: I would like to set the XFS (all file 
    systems are XFS) block size to the same size as the PostgreSQL page 
    size. I am surprized this isn't a recommended action to take? It would 
    seem to make sense to reduce IO system calls and push entire pages in 
    one fell swoop every time. Right?
    
    regards,
    -Gunther
    
    PS: aaaaand we're going down. Ran vacuumdb again, but that didn't help 
    much. It's going down again.
    
    
    
  2. Re: Distributing data over "spindles" even on AWS EBS, (followup to the work queue saga)

    Gunther <raj@gusw.net> — 2019-03-14T14:53:11Z

    I am going to reply to my own message to add more information that I 
    think can be interesting for others.
    
    I find that IO contention continues being a number one issue for 
    streamlining database performance (it's a duh! but it's significant 
    sticky point!)
    
    I told you my performance was again going down the drain rapidly. In my 
    case it's going so fast because the database is filling up fast with all 
    that heavy load activity. I still don't know if autovacuum is running 
    well. But when I tried to manually vacuumdb I noticed the number of dead 
    rows relatively small, so I don't think that the lack of vacuuming was 
    an issue.
    
    I have a bottleneck though.
    
    There is one massive table, let's call it Foo, and in Foo there is also 
    significant amount of toasted text, and there is a child table called 
    Foo_id then two indexes on Foo_id. Here the essentials:
    
    CREATE TABLE Foo {
       internalId UUID PRIMARY KEY,
       ... -- tons of columns
       text_xml text, -- lot's of stuff to toast
       ... -- tons of more columns
    };
    
    CREATE TABLE Foo_id {
       fooInternalId UUID REFERENCES Foo(internalId),
       prefix text,
       suffix text
    }
    
    CREATE INDEX Foo_id_fkidx ON Foo_id(fooInternalId);
    CREATE INDEX Foo_id_idx ON Foo_id(prefix, suffix);
    
    Now, it so happens that the activity on that index is so large that this 
    volume has 100% io utilization per iostat and everyone is at 75% iowait:
    
    Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
    nvme8n1           0.00     0.00   69.00   45.00   880.00   400.00    22.46     8.79   90.95   88.64   94.49   8.77 100.00
    
    However, the only really heavily used data file here really is just that 
    Foo_id_idx. That one index!
    
    I think I have a few ways to alleviate the  bottleneck:
    
     1. partition that Foo_id table so that that index would be partitioned
        too and I can spread it out over multiple volumes.
     2. build a low level "spreading" scheme which is to take the partial
        files 4653828 and 4653828.1, .2, _fsm, etc. and move each to another
        device and then symlink it back to that directory (I come back to this!)
     3. maybe I can only partition the index by using the WHERE clause on
        the CREATE INDEX over some hash function of the Foo_id.prefix column.
     4. maybe I can configure in AWS EBS to reserve more IOPS -- but why
        would I pay for more IOPS if my cost is by volume size? I can just
        make another volume? or does AWS play a similar trick on us with
        IOPS being limited on some "credit" system???
    
    To 1. I find it surprisingly complicated to have to create a partitioned 
    table only in order to spread an index over multiple volumes.
    
    To 2. I find that it would be a nice feature of PostgreSQL if we could 
    just use symlinks and a symlink rule, for example, when PostgreSQL finds 
    that 4653828 is in fact a symlink to /otherdisk/PG/16284/4653828, then 
    it would
    
      * by default also create  4653828.1 as a symlink and place the actual
        data file on /otherdisk/PG/16284/4653828.1
      * or even easier: it would allow the admin to pre-create the datafiles
        or even just the symlinks to not yet extisting datafiles, so that
        when it comes to create the 4653828.2 it will do it wherever that
        symlink points to, either a broken symlink whose target will then be
        created, or a symlink to a zero-size file that was already pre-created.
      * and also easier, allow us to pre-set the size of the data files with
        truncate --size $target_size so that PostgreSQL will use the next
        .1, .2, .3 file once the target size has been reached, rather than
        filling up all those 4 GB
      * I think that if, as I find, the wisdom to "divide data over
        spindles" is still true, then it would be best if PostgreSQL had a
        distribution scheme which is not at the logical data model level
        (partition ... tablespace), but rather just on the low level.
    
    That last point I just made up. But it is extremely useful if PostgreSQL 
    would have this sort of very very simple intelligence.
    
    To 3. if I create the index like this:
    
    CREATE INDEX Foo_id_idx ON Foo_id(prefix, suffix) WHERE hashmod(prefix,4) = 0 TABLESPACE /tbs/Foo_id_0;
    CREATE INDEX Foo_id_idx ON Foo_id(prefix, suffix) WHERE hashmod(prefix,4) = 1 TABLESPACE /tbs/Foo_id_1;
    CREATE INDEX Foo_id_idx ON Foo_id(prefix, suffix) WHERE hashmod(prefix,4) = 2 TABLESPACE /tbs/Foo_id_2;
    CREATE INDEX Foo_id_idx ON Foo_id(prefix, suffix) WHERE hashmod(prefix,4) = 3 TABLESPACE /tbs/Foo_id_3;
    
    with some appropriately defined hashmod function that divides up 4 
    approximately equal partitions.
    
    Is there any downside to this approach? It looks to me that this does 
    everything partitioning scheme would also do, i.e., (1) routing inserted 
    tuples into the right file, and (2) resolving which file to refer to 
    based on the data of the query. What am I missing?
    
    regards,
    -Gunther
    
    On 3/13/2019 14:44, Gunther wrote:
    >
    > Hello again. You may remember my queue issue for which some of you 
    > have proposed to use a partitioned table approach. I have done that, 
    > and I might report more on that once I have this beast all tamed, 
    > which may be now. Let's say in short, it definitely helped immensely. 
    > My test case now is different from what I had previously done. I am 
    > now hammering my database with 52 worker threads uploading like crazy 
    > into some 100 tables and indexes.
    >
    > Right now I want to remind everybody of the surprising fact that the 
    > old wisdom of distributing load over "spindles" appears to be still 
    > true even in the virtualized world of cloud computing. For background, 
    > this is running on Amazon AWS, the db server is a c5.xlarge and you 
    > see I have 0.0 st, because my virtual CPUs are dedicated.
    >
    > I had run into a situation which was totally crazy. Here I show you a 
    > snapshot of top and iostat output as it ran all night with totally low 
    > tps.
    >
    > top - 12:43:42 up 1 day,  9:29,  3 users,  load average: 41.03, 39.58, 38.91
    > Tasks: 385 total,   1 running, 169 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
    > %Cpu(s):  2.9 us,  0.9 sy,  0.0 ni,  5.9 id, 90.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.1 si,  0.0 st
    > KiB Mem :  7809760 total,   130528 free,   948504 used,  6730728 buff/cache
    > KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 free,        0 used.  4357496 avail Mem
    >
    >    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
    > 20839 postgres  20   0 2309448  86892  83132 D   1.0  1.1   0:00.04 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(44862) SELECT
    > 17230 postgres  20   0 2318736   1.7g   1.7g D   0.7 23.0   0:10.00 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(44458) SELECT
    > 19209 postgres  20   0 2318760   1.7g   1.7g D   0.7 22.7   0:04.89 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(44421) SELECT
    > 19467 postgres  20   0 2318160   1.8g   1.8g D   0.7 23.6   0:04.20 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(56981) INSERT
    > 19990 postgres  20   0 2318084   1.2g   1.2g D   0.7 16.1   0:02.12 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(50413) SELECT
    > 20004 postgres  20   0 2317924 863460 853052 D   0.7 11.1   0:02.10 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(21895) INSERT
    > 20555 postgres  20   0 2316952 899376 890260 D   0.7 11.5   0:00.65 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(60209) INSERT
    > 20786 postgres  20   0 2312208 736224 729528 D   0.7  9.4   0:00.22 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(48175) INSERT
    > 18709 postgres  20   0 2318780   1.9g   1.8g D   0.3 24.9   0:06.18 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(17281) SELECT
    > 19228 postgres  20   0 2318940   1.7g   1.7g D   0.3 22.4   0:04.63 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(63850) INSERT
    > 19457 postgres  20   0 2318028   1.1g   1.1g D   0.3 15.0   0:03.69 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(33298) INSERT
    > 19656 postgres  20   0 2318080   1.3g   1.3g D   0.3 18.1   0:02.90 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(23307) INSERT
    > 19723 postgres  20   0 2317948   1.3g   1.2g D   0.3 16.8   0:02.17 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(44744) SELECT
    > 20034 postgres  20   0 2318044 927200 916924 D   0.3 11.9   0:02.19 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(64385) SELECT
    > 20080 postgres  20   0 2318124   1.2g   1.2g D   0.3 15.6   0:01.90 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(23430) INSERT
    > 20264 postgres  20   0 2317824   1.0g   1.0g D   0.3 13.9   0:01.28 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(64347) INSERT
    > 20285 postgres  20   0 2318096 582712 572456 D   0.3  7.5   0:01.08 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(34511) INSERT
    > 20392 root      20   0       0      0      0 I   0.3  0.0   0:00.05 [kworker/u8:1]
    > 19954 postgres  20   0 2317848   1.2g   1.2g D   0.3 15.8   0:01.95 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(65080) SELECT
    > 20004 postgres  20   0 2317924 863460 853052 D   0.3 11.1   0:02.08 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(21895) INSERT
    > 20034 postgres  20   0 2318044 923876 913600 D   0.3 11.8   0:02.18 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(64385) SELECT
    > 20080 postgres  20   0 2318124   1.2g   1.1g D   0.3 15.6   0:01.89 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(23430) SELECT
    > 20248 postgres  20   0 2318312 598416 587972 D   0.3  7.7   0:01.14 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(44375) SELECT
    > 20264 postgres  20   0 2317824   1.0g   1.0g D   0.3 13.9   0:01.27 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(64347) INSERT
    > 20350 postgres  20   0 2318228 546652 536396 D   0.3  7.0   0:00.87 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(60787) INSERT
    > 20590 postgres  20   0 2317208 893232 883840 D   0.3 11.4   0:00.61 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(14003) INSERT
    > 20595 postgres  20   0 2317172 884792 875428 D   0.3 11.3   0:00.59 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(59843) INSERT
    > 20603 postgres  20   0 2316596 838408 829668 D   0.3 10.7   0:00.50 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(16697) INSERT
    > 20770 postgres  20   0  171388   4456   3628 R   0.3  0.1   0:00.13 top -c
    >
    > you can see here that all these postgress processes are in 
    > "non-interruptible sleep" (D) state. CPU% is ridiculously low (and 
    > that's not because of steal, c5 instances do not run on "CPU 
    > credits"). Are they all in IO blocked state? Let's see iostat:
    >
    > avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle2.51 0.00 0.75 94.99 
    > 0.00 1.75Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rkB/s wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz 
    > await r_await w_await svctm %utilnvme1n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme2n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme3n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme4n1 0.00 0.00 1.00 
    > 5.00 8.00 27.50 11.83 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme8n1 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme9n1 0.00 
    > 0.00 91.00 2.00 3040.00 3.00 65.44 0.00 0.65 0.66 0.00 0.04 
    > 0.40nvme11n1 0.00 2.00 0.00 24.00 0.00 1090.00 90.83 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme10n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme6n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme7n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme12n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme5n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme16n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme15n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 2.00 0.00 1.50 1.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme13n1 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme14n1 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme17n1 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00nvme18n1 0.00 0.00 194.00 133.00 1896.00 3253.50 31.50 6.90 23.27 
    > 31.18 11.73 2.46 80.40nvme19n1 0.00 0.00 6.00 13.00 48.00 355.50 42.47 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme20n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme21n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme22n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme23n1 0.00 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00nvme0n1 0.00 0.00 
    > 0.00 7.00 0.00 69.50 19.86 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
    >
    > You see that I already did a lot to balance IO out to many different 
    > tablespaces that's why there are so many volumes. Yet my iowait % was 
    > at > 95%. I though all my user data was spread out over the 
    > tablespaces, so that I could control the IO contention. But there 
    > remained a crazy hotspot on this nvme18n1 volume. And it turns out 
    > that was the data/base default tablespace, and that I had failed to 
    > actually assign proper tablespaces to many of the tables.
    >
    > Now I brought the server to a maintenance halt killing and blocking 
    > all the worker threads from connecting again during the move, and then 
    > did the tablespace move.
    >
    > ALTER DATABASE integrator CONNECTION LIMIT 0;
    > SELECT pg_terminate_backend(pid)
    >    FROM pg_stat_activity
    >   WHERE datname = 'integrator'
    >     AND pid <> pg_backend_pid()
    >     AND backend_type = 'client backend';
    > ALTER TABLE integrator.... SET TABLESPACE ...;
    > ...
    > ALTER TABLE integrator.... SET TABLESPACE ...;
    > ALTER DATABASE integrator CONNECTION LIMIT -1;
    >
    > And then look at what this helped:
    >
    > avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
    >            38.90    0.00   10.47   13.97    0.00   36.66
    >
    > Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
    > nvme1n1           0.00     0.00    9.00   37.00    72.00   296.00    16.00     0.00    0.52    0.44    0.54   0.00   0.00
    > nvme2n1           0.00     0.00  129.00  467.00  1152.00  4152.00    17.80     0.13    0.47    0.25    0.53   0.18  10.80
    > nvme3n1           0.00     0.00    8.00   38.00    64.00   304.00    16.00     0.00    0.61    0.50    0.63   0.00   0.00
    > nvme4n1           0.00     0.00    8.00   43.00    64.00   344.00    16.00     0.00    0.47    0.00    0.56   0.00   0.00
    > nvme8n1           0.00     0.00  326.00 1104.00  3452.00 10248.00    19.16     0.56    0.58    0.39    0.64   0.15  20.80
    > nvme9n1           0.00     0.00   29.00   71.00   232.00   568.00    16.00     0.00    0.64    0.41    0.73   0.00   0.00
    > nvme11n1          0.00     0.00    0.00  193.00     0.00 37720.00   390.88     0.66    4.15    0.00    4.15   0.58  11.20
    > nvme10n1          0.00     0.00  185.00  281.00  1560.00  2264.00    16.41     0.06    0.51    0.58    0.46   0.10   4.80
    > nvme6n1           0.00     0.00   14.00  137.00   112.00  1096.00    16.00     0.00    0.42    0.00    0.47   0.03   0.40
    > nvme7n1           0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
    > nvme12n1          0.00     0.00  267.00  584.00  2656.00  4864.00    17.67     0.23    0.53    0.54    0.53   0.19  16.40
    > nvme5n1           0.00     0.00   22.00   14.00   176.00   112.00    16.00     0.00    0.78    1.09    0.29   0.00   0.00
    > nvme16n1          0.00     0.00   75.00  179.00   732.00  1432.00    17.04     0.01    0.55    0.32    0.65   0.05   1.20
    > nvme15n1          0.00     0.00    0.00   16.00     0.00   128.00    16.00     0.00    1.25    0.00    1.25   0.00   0.00
    > nvme13n1          0.00     0.00  185.00  631.00  1804.00  5904.00    18.89     0.21    0.47    0.28    0.53   0.16  13.20
    > nvme14n1          0.00     0.00  141.00  227.00  1128.00  1816.00    16.00     0.02    0.48    0.57    0.42   0.05   2.00
    > nvme17n1          0.00     0.00   69.00  250.00   704.00  2000.00    16.95     0.00    0.44    0.41    0.45   0.00   0.00
    > nvme18n1          0.00     0.00    9.00    9.00    72.00    72.00    16.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
    > nvme19n1          0.00     0.00  137.00  294.00  1576.00  3088.00    21.64     0.07    0.56    0.82    0.44   0.14   6.00
    > nvme20n1          0.00     0.00  191.00  693.00  1796.00  6336.00    18.40     0.37    0.65    0.44    0.70   0.20  18.00
    > nvme21n1          0.00     0.00   90.00  140.00   856.00  1120.00    17.18     0.01    0.56    0.36    0.69   0.05   1.20
    > nvme22n1          0.00     0.00  426.00  859.00  4016.00  7272.00    17.57     0.40    0.54    0.60    0.52   0.14  18.40
    > nvme23n1          0.00     0.00  512.00  916.00  5076.00 10288.00    21.52     0.50    0.53    0.36    0.63   0.12  17.20
    > nvme0n1           0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00     0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00
    >
    > And top:
    >
    > top - 18:08:13 up 1 day, 14:54, 10 users,  load average: 4.89, 6.09, 4.93
    > Tasks: 395 total,   4 running, 161 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
    > %Cpu(s): 55.6 us,  8.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 18.9 id, 14.2 wa,  0.0 hi,  2.4 si,  0.0 st
    > KiB Mem :  7809760 total,   136320 free,   610204 used,  7063236 buff/cache
    > KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 free,        0 used.  4693632 avail Mem
    >
    >    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
    > 13601 postgres  20   0 2319104   1.9g   1.9g S  40.2 25.9   0:18.76 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(15235) idle
    > 13606 postgres  20   0 2318832   1.6g   1.6g S  18.6 21.7   0:14.25 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(49226) idle i+
    > 13760 postgres  20   0 2318772   1.7g   1.7g S  17.6 23.4   0:11.09 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.57.147(45312) idle i+
    > 13600 postgres  20   0 2318892   1.9g   1.9g R  15.6 26.1   0:20.08 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(63958) BIND
    > 13603 postgres  20   0 2318480   1.8g   1.8g S  15.3 24.0   0:22.72 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.57.147(23817) idle i+
    > 13714 postgres  20   0 2318640   1.8g   1.8g S  15.3 24.0   0:10.99 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(58893) idle in+
    > 13607 postgres  20   0 2318748   1.9g   1.9g S  14.6 25.8   0:19.59 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.57.147(11889) idle
    > 13844 postgres  20   0 2318260 730388 719972 S  13.0  9.4   0:02.03 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(58949) idle i+
    > 13716 postgres  20   0 2318816   1.8g   1.8g S  12.3 24.2   0:11.94 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(53131) idle in+
    > 13717 postgres  20   0 2318752   1.6g   1.6g S  10.3 21.0   0:13.39 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(19934) idle in+
    > 13837 postgres  20   0 2318296 805832 795380 S  10.3 10.3   0:02.28 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(63185) idle i+
    > 13839 postgres  20   0 2317956 722788 712532 S  10.3  9.3   0:02.04 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(57414) idle i+
    > 13836 postgres  20   0 2318188 697716 687224 R  10.0  8.9   0:02.09 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(51576) INSERT
    > 13846 postgres  20   0 2317716   1.3g   1.3g S  10.0 17.0   0:02.19 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(16349) idle i+
    > 13854 postgres  20   0 2313504 224276 216592 S   7.3  2.9   0:00.42 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(18867) idle i+
    > 18055 postgres  20   0 2308060   2.1g   2.1g S   7.0 27.6   3:04.07 postgres: checkpointer
    > 13602 postgres  20   0 2319160   1.8g   1.8g S   6.6 23.9   0:21.21 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.54.158(45183) idle i+
    > 13833 postgres  20   0 2317848 879168 869312 S   6.0 11.3   0:02.90 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(47892) idle i+
    > 13710 postgres  20   0 2318856   1.4g   1.4g S   5.6 19.3   0:09.89 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(22184) idle in+
    > 13809 postgres  20   0 2318168   1.1g   1.1g D   4.7 14.4   0:04.94 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.63.71(44808) SELECT
    > 13843 postgres  20   0 2318276 595844 585432 S   4.0  7.6   0:01.36 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(39820) idle i+
    > 13860 postgres  20   0 2311872 139372 133356 R   3.7  1.8   0:00.11 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.49.159(57420) idle i+
    >    462 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   1.7  0.0   1:41.44 [kswapd0]
    > 13859 postgres  20   0 2308104  96788  93884 S   1.7  1.2   0:00.05 postgres: auser integrator 172.31.61.242(43391) idle i+
    > 18057 postgres  20   0 2305108  19108  18624 S   1.7  0.2   1:26.62 postgres: walwriter
    >   1559 root       0 -20       0      0      0 I   0.3  0.0   0:19.21 [kworker/1:1H]
    >   1560 root       0 -20       0      0      0 I   0.3  0.0   0:25.19 [kworker/3:1H]
    >   2619 root      20   0   13144    400    292 S   0.3  0.0   0:28.52 /sbin/rngd -f
    >
    > This helped!
    >
    > There is a nice saturation now of CPU at the high end of the "linear" 
    > range, i.e., we aren't in the distortion range or >90% and yet all 
    > workers are runn
    >
    > I can do 17 transactions per second with 52 parallel worker threads. 
    > Now we have not run yet for over an hour but so far so good. With my 
    > old non-partitioned work queue table I would have long run into the 
    > index degradation.
    >
    > I am not sure my autovacuum setup is working right though. I wonder if 
    > there isn't some autovacuum statistics which I can query that would 
    > give me confidence that it is actually running?
    >
    > Finally the last question for now: I would like to set the XFS (all 
    > file systems are XFS) block size to the same size as the PostgreSQL 
    > page size. I am surprized this isn't a recommended action to take? It 
    > would seem to make sense to reduce IO system calls and push entire 
    > pages in one fell swoop every time. Right?
    >
    > regards,
    > -Gunther
    >
    > PS: aaaaand we're going down. Ran vacuumdb again, but that didn't help 
    > much. It's going down again.
    >
    >
    
  3. Re: Distributing data over "spindles" even on AWS EBS, (followup to the work queue saga)

    Jeremy Schneider <schnjere@amazon.com> — 2019-03-14T15:11:20Z

    On 3/14/19 07:53, Gunther wrote:
    >  2. build a low level "spreading" scheme which is to take the partial
    >     files 4653828 and 4653828.1, .2, _fsm, etc. and move each to another
    >     device and then symlink it back to that directory (I come back to this!)
    ...
    > To 2. I find that it would be a nice feature of PostgreSQL if we could
    > just use symlinks and a symlink rule, for example, when PostgreSQL finds
    > that 4653828 is in fact a symlink to /otherdisk/PG/16284/4653828, then
    > it would
    >
    >  * by default also create  4653828.1 as a symlink and place the actual
    >    data file on /otherdisk/PG/16284/4653828.1
    
    How about if we could just specify multiple tablespaces for an object,
    and then PostgreSQL would round-robin new segments across the presently
    configured tablespaces?  This seems like a simple and elegant solution
    to me.
    
    
    >  4. maybe I can configure in AWS EBS to reserve more IOPS -- but why
    >     would I pay for more IOPS if my cost is by volume size? I can just
    >     make another volume? or does AWS play a similar trick on us with
    >     IOPS being limited on some "credit" system???
    
    Not credits, but if you're using gp2 volumes then pay close attention to
    how burst balance works. A single large volume is the same price as two
    striped volumes at half size -- but the striped volumes will have double
    the burst speed and take twice as long to refill the burst balance.
    
    -Jeremy
    
    -- 
    Jeremy Schneider
    Database Engineer
    Amazon Web Services
    
    
    
  4. Re: Distributing data over "spindles" even on AWS EBS, (followup to the work queue saga)

    Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com> — 2019-03-14T15:54:56Z

    On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 02:44:10PM -0400, Gunther wrote:
    > You see that I already did a lot to balance IO out to many different
    > tablespaces that's why there are so many volumes.
    
    I wonder if it wouldn't be both better and much easier to have just 1 or 2
    tablespaces and combine drives into a single LVM VG and do something like
    lvcreate --stripes 
    
    > I am not sure my autovacuum setup is working right though. I wonder if there
    > isn't some autovacuum statistics which I can query that would give me
    > confidence that it is actually running?
    
    pg_stat_all_tables
    
    Did you do this ?
    ALTER TABLE ... SET (autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor=0.001, autovacuum_vacuum_threshold=1);
    
    Justin
    
    
    
  5. Re: Distributing data over "spindles" even on AWS EBS, (followup to the work queue saga)

    Gunther <raj@gusw.net> — 2019-03-17T18:42:04Z

    On 3/14/2019 11:11, Jeremy Schneider wrote:
    > On 3/14/19 07:53, Gunther wrote:
    >>   2. build a low level "spreading" scheme which is to take the partial
    >>      files 4653828 and 4653828.1, .2, _fsm, etc. and move each to another
    >>      device and then symlink it back to that directory (I come back to this!)
    > ...
    >> To 2. I find that it would be a nice feature of PostgreSQL if we could
    >> just use symlinks and a symlink rule, for example, when PostgreSQL finds
    >> that 4653828 is in fact a symlink to /otherdisk/PG/16284/4653828, then
    >> it would
    >>
    >>   * by default also create  4653828.1 as a symlink and place the actual
    >>     data file on /otherdisk/PG/16284/4653828.1
    > How about if we could just specify multiple tablespaces for an object,
    > and then PostgreSQL would round-robin new segments across the presently
    > configured tablespaces?  This seems like a simple and elegant solution
    > to me.
    
    Very good idea! I agree.
    
    Very important also would be to take out the existing patch someone had 
    contributed to allow toast tables to be assigned to different tablespaces.
    
    >>   4. maybe I can configure in AWS EBS to reserve more IOPS -- but why
    >>      would I pay for more IOPS if my cost is by volume size? I can just
    >>      make another volume? or does AWS play a similar trick on us with
    >>      IOPS being limited on some "credit" system???
    > Not credits, but if you're using gp2 volumes then pay close attention to
    > how burst balance works. A single large volume is the same price as two
    > striped volumes at half size -- but the striped volumes will have double
    > the burst speed and take twice as long to refill the burst balance.
    
    Yes, I learned that too. It seems a very interesting "bug" of the Amazon 
    GP2 IOPS allocation scheme.  They say it's like 3 IOPS per GiB, so if I 
    have 100 GiB I get 300 IOPS. But it also says minimum 100. So that means 
    if I have 10 volumes of 10 GiB each, I get 1000 IOPS minimum between 
    them all. But if I have it all on one 100 GiB volume I only get 300 IOPS.
    
    I wonder if Amazon is aware of this. I hope they are and think that's 
    just fine. Because I like it.
    
    It also is a clear sign to me that I want to use page sizes > 4k for the 
    file system. I have tried on Amazon Linux to use 8k block sizes of the 
    XFS volume, but I cannot mount those, since the Linux says it can 
    currently only deal with 4k blocks. This is another reason I consider 
    switching the database server(s) to FreeBSD.  OTOH, who knows may be 
    this 4k is a limit of the AWS EBS infrastructure. After all, if I am 
    scraping the 300 or 1000 IOPS limit already and if I can suddenly 
    upgrade my block sizes per IO, I double my IO throughput.
    
    regards,
    -Gunther
    
    
    
    
  6. Re: Distributing data over "spindles" even on AWS EBS, (followup to the work queue saga)

    Samuel Gendler <sgendler@ideasculptor.com> — 2019-03-19T15:18:10Z

    You do have a finite amount of bandwidth per-instance. On c5.xlarge, it is
    3500 Mbit/sec, no matter how many iops you buy.  Keep an eye on yur overall
    EBS bandwidth utilization.
    
    On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 11:42 AM Gunther <raj@gusw.net> wrote:
    
    > On 3/14/2019 11:11, Jeremy Schneider wrote:
    > > On 3/14/19 07:53, Gunther wrote:
    > >>   2. build a low level "spreading" scheme which is to take the partial
    > >>      files 4653828 and 4653828.1, .2, _fsm, etc. and move each to
    > another
    > >>      device and then symlink it back to that directory (I come back to
    > this!)
    > > ...
    > >> To 2. I find that it would be a nice feature of PostgreSQL if we could
    > >> just use symlinks and a symlink rule, for example, when PostgreSQL finds
    > >> that 4653828 is in fact a symlink to /otherdisk/PG/16284/4653828, then
    > >> it would
    > >>
    > >>   * by default also create  4653828.1 as a symlink and place the actual
    > >>     data file on /otherdisk/PG/16284/4653828.1
    > > How about if we could just specify multiple tablespaces for an object,
    > > and then PostgreSQL would round-robin new segments across the presently
    > > configured tablespaces?  This seems like a simple and elegant solution
    > > to me.
    >
    > Very good idea! I agree.
    >
    > Very important also would be to take out the existing patch someone had
    > contributed to allow toast tables to be assigned to different tablespaces.
    >
    > >>   4. maybe I can configure in AWS EBS to reserve more IOPS -- but why
    > >>      would I pay for more IOPS if my cost is by volume size? I can just
    > >>      make another volume? or does AWS play a similar trick on us with
    > >>      IOPS being limited on some "credit" system???
    > > Not credits, but if you're using gp2 volumes then pay close attention to
    > > how burst balance works. A single large volume is the same price as two
    > > striped volumes at half size -- but the striped volumes will have double
    > > the burst speed and take twice as long to refill the burst balance.
    >
    > Yes, I learned that too. It seems a very interesting "bug" of the Amazon
    > GP2 IOPS allocation scheme.  They say it's like 3 IOPS per GiB, so if I
    > have 100 GiB I get 300 IOPS. But it also says minimum 100. So that means
    > if I have 10 volumes of 10 GiB each, I get 1000 IOPS minimum between
    > them all. But if I have it all on one 100 GiB volume I only get 300 IOPS.
    >
    > I wonder if Amazon is aware of this. I hope they are and think that's
    > just fine. Because I like it.
    >
    > It also is a clear sign to me that I want to use page sizes > 4k for the
    > file system. I have tried on Amazon Linux to use 8k block sizes of the
    > XFS volume, but I cannot mount those, since the Linux says it can
    > currently only deal with 4k blocks. This is another reason I consider
    > switching the database server(s) to FreeBSD.  OTOH, who knows may be
    > this 4k is a limit of the AWS EBS infrastructure. After all, if I am
    > scraping the 300 or 1000 IOPS limit already and if I can suddenly
    > upgrade my block sizes per IO, I double my IO throughput.
    >
    > regards,
    > -Gunther
    >
    >
    >