Re: [PERFORM] Database size growing over time and leads to performance impact

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Gnanakumar wrote:
>
> We're using PostgreSQL 8.2. Recently, in our production database,
> there was a severe performance impact.. Even though, we're regularly
> doing both:
>
> 1. VACUUM FULL ANALYZE once in a week during low-usage time and
>
> 2. ANALYZE everyday at low-usage time
>
>
> Also, we noticed that the physical database size has grown upto 30
> GB. But, if I dump the database in the form of SQL and import it
> locally in my machine, it was only 3.2 GB.
>

Most VACUUM problems are caused by not running VACUUM often enough. A
weekly VACUUM is really infrequent. And it's rarely ever a good idea to
run VACUUM FULL.

You should switch over to running a regular VACUUM, not a full one, on
something closer to a daily or more frequent basis instead.

> Then while searching in Google to optimize database size, I found the
> following useful link:
>
> http://www.linuxinsight.com/optimize_postgresql_database_size.html
>
> It says that even vacuumdb or reindexdb doesn't really compact
> database size, only dump/restore does because of MVCC architecture
> feature in PostgreSQL and this has been proven here.
>

That article covers PostgreSQL as of V7.4, and much of it is outdated
information that doesn't apply to the 8.2 you're running. It's a pretty
bad description even of that version. You should try to forget
everything you read there and instead look at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/interactive/maintenance.html for an
accurate introduction to this topic. I'm sorry you've been misled by it.

> Physical database size was found using the following command:
>
> du -sh /usr/local/pgsql/data/base/<database-oid>
>
> I also cross-checked this size using
> "pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size(datname))".
>

You should use the queries shown at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Disk_Usage instead of this, which will
break down where the disk space is going by table and index. You will
discover one of two things:

1) As the database grows, most of the disk space is being taken up by
the tables themselves. In this case, a more frequent VACUUM is likely
to make that go away. You might also need to bump up one of the
parameters in the postgresql.conf file, max_fsm_pages

2) Lots of disk space is being taken up by indexes on the tables. If
this is the case, the fact that you're running VACUUM FULL all the time
is the likely cause of your problem.

> Questions
>
> 1. Is there any version/update of PostgreSQL addressing this issue?
>
> 2. How in real time, this issues are handled by other PostgreSQL
> users without taking to downtime?
>
> 3. Any ideas or links whether this is addressed in upcoming
> PostgreSQL version 9.0 release?
>
>
>

PostgreSQL 8.3 turns on a better tuned autovacuum by default so that
it's more likely VACUUM will run often enough to keep the problem you're
having from happening. 8.4 removes an additional source of problems
that can cause VACUUM to stop working. As of 8.4, most of the problems
in this area are gone in the default configuration. Just looking at
newer versions of the associated documentation will give you an idea
what's changed;
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/maintenance.html is
the 8.4 version. The problems with VACUUM FULL are so bad that as of
9.0, the old implementation of that (the one you're probably getting bad
behavior from) has been replaced by a more efficient one.

The main situation newer PostgreSQL versions can still run into a
problem where the indexes get large if you're deleting records in some
ways; http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/routine-reindex.html
describes that issue, and that bit of documentation and the underlying
behavior is unchanged in later releases. It's much more likely that
you're running into the very common situation instead where you're
running VACUUM FULL infrequently, where you should be running regular
VACUUM frequently instead.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com www.2ndQuadrant.us