Re: Limit of bgwriter_lru_maxpages of max. 1000?

Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> The session servers we have at work are a perfect match for this. By
> increasing checkpoint segments to 100 (or more), timeout to 60
> minutes, and setting completion target lower (currently 0.25) we have
> reduced our IO wait from 10 to 15% to nearly nothing. These are
> databases that update the same rows over and over with session data as
> the user navigates the system, so writing things out as early as
> possible is a REAL bad idea.

> I found that lowering checkpoint completion target was what helped.
> Does that seem counter-intuitive to you?

Once the checkpoint completion target time is high enough that the
checkpoint-induced I/O is just background noise for you, increasing the
target further won't make for any noticeable further improvement. I'm
not sure I see how it would make things *worse* though. Maybe, even
though the I/O wait is "nearly nothing", the I/O is still forcing enough
extra seeks to slow normal disk operations? If so, getting the
checkpoint out of the way sooner so that you can get back to full speed
operation sooner might be better than reducing the rate of checkpoint
I/Os below the nearly-noise level. I'm just guessing about that though.
What were you measuring --- the performance within checkpoint, the
performance outside it, or the whole-cycle average?

regards, tom lane