Re: DBA tasks

On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 08:43:15AM +1000, Mark Matthews wrote:
> Can anyone recommend good reference text, web or other, for general
> PostgreSQL DBA tasks.

The PostgreSQL documentation is a good place to start. See "Server
Administration," especially the chapters concerning routine maintenance,
backup and restore, and monitoring.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/admin.html

(Adjust the link to match the version you're running.)

> Stuff like:
> * Things to do to clean up periodically (CLUSTER, VACUUM FULL, etc)

See above.

> * How to analyse queries to optimise data retrieval (Use of EXPLAIN,
> etc)

See "Performance Tips" in the documentation and the tuning documents
at powerpostgresql.com. You could also peruse the list archives,
especially pgsql-performance, to see how real performance problems
have been investigated and addressed. For example, search for
threads that contain the words "EXPLAIN ANALYZE".

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/performance-tips.html
http://www.powerpostgresql.com/Docs/
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/

The General Bits newsletter has interesting articles; see the
Archives and General Tidbits links.

http://www.varlena.com/varlena/GeneralBits/

> We are running Debian stable (sarge) and therefore 7.4. Moving to 8.1
> soon (hopefully)

Before upgrading read the Release Notes for all newer versions to
see what changes you'll be getting. See also "If You Are Upgrading"
in the Installation Instructions and read the Backup and Restore
chapter, which has a "Migration Between Releases" section.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/release.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/install-upgrading.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/migration.html

--
Michael Fuhr