Re: Seeking performance advice and explanation for high I/O on 8.3

Scott Otis wrote:
> I agree that they don't make sense - part of the reason I am looking for
> help :)
>
> I am using iostat to get those numbers ( which I specify to average over
> 5 min then collect to display in Cacti ).
>
> 2 processes are taking up a good deal of CPU - the postgres stats
> collector and autovacuum ones. Both of those are using a lot of 1 core
> each.
>
> I am not familiar with a dd test - what is that?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Scott
>
> On Sep 3, 2009, at 8:03 AM, "Andy Colson" <andy(at)squeakycode(dot)net> wrote:
>
>> Scott Otis wrote:
>>> Would love to get some advice on how to change my conf settings /
>>> setup to get better I/O performance.
>>> Total I/O (these number are pretty constant throughout the day):
>>> Reads: ~ 100 / sec for about 2.6 Mb/sec
>>> Writes: ~ 400 /sec for about 46.1Mb/sec
>>> Most of the SQL happening is selects – very little inserts, updates
>>> and deletes comparatively.
>>
>> Maybe I'm wrong, but those two don't seem to jive. You say its mostly
>> selects, but you show higher writes per second.
>>
>> Does freebsd have a vmstat or iostat? How did you get the numbers
>> above? How's the cpu's look? (are they pegged?)
>>
>> The io stats above seem low (reading 2 meg a second is a tiny
>> fraction of what your system should be capable of). Have you tried a
>> dd test?
>>
>> -Andy

Please keep the list included so others may help.

the dd test:

http://www.westnet.com/~gsmith/content/postgresql/pg-disktesting.htm

I think Ivan is right, the 2 meg a second is probably because most of the reads are from cache. But he and I looked at the writes differently. If we ignore the 400/sec, and just read 46 meg a second (assuming you meant megabyte and not megabit) then, that's pretty slow (for sequential writing) -- which the dd test will measure your sequential read and write speed.

Ivan asked a good question:
By the way, why do you think your setup is slow? Is your application slow and you think your database is the reason?

-Andy