Steve,
> I'm used to performance tuning on a select-heavy database, but this
> will have a very different impact on the system. Does anyone have any
> experience with an update heavy system, and have any performance hints
> or hardware suggestions?
Minimal/no indexes on the table(s). Raise checkpoint_segments and consider
using commit_siblings/commit_delay if it's a multi-stream application.
Figure out ways to do inserts instead of updates where possible, and COPY
instead of insert, where possible. Put your WAL on its own disk resource.
I'm a little curious as to what kind of app would be 95% writes. A log?
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco