Re: moving data between tables causes the db to overwhelm the system

> Hi all;
>
> We have a table that's > 2billion rows big and growing fast. We've setup
> monthly partitions for it. Upon running the first of many select * from
> bigTable insert into partition statements (330million rows per month) the
> entire box eventually goes out to lunch.
>
> Any thoughts/suggestions?
>
> Thanks in advance
>

Sorry, but your post does not provide enough information, so it's
practically impossible to give you some suggestions :-(

Provide at least these information:

1) basic info about the hardware (number and type of cpus, amount of RAM,
controller, number of disk drives)

2) more detailed information of the table size and structure (see the
pg_class and pg_stat_* views). Information about indexes and triggers
created on the table

3) explain plan of the problematic queries - in this case the 'select *
from bigtable' etc.

4) detailed description what 'going to lunch' means - does that mean the
CPU is 100% occupied, or is there a problem with I/O (use vmstat / dstat
or something like that)

I've probably forgot something, but this might be a good starting point.

regards
Tomas