Re: Controlling proliferation of postgres.exe processes

2009/6/23 Radcon Entec <radconentec(at)yahoo(dot)com>

> Greetings!
>
> At the current moment, our customer's computer has 22 instances of
> postgres.exe running. When a colleague checked a few minutes ago, there
> were 29. Our contract specifies that we cannot consume more than 40% of the
> computer's memory, and we're over that level. When does an instance of
> postgres.exe get created, and how can we make sure we create only the
> minimum number necessary?
>
> Thanks very much!
>
> RobR
>

Every single time someone connects to the database, one of those things
will start. So if you have a new user in the app, and your app is 1 db
connection per user, then you will have a postgres.exe for each one of them
on top of 3 or 4 that the system is using.

As far as memory, the way the task manager shows memory is slightly
mis-leading. Each process is not actually taking up the full amount shown.
The reason for this is that postgres is sharing a large memory area between
multiple postgres.exe's, but windows (and linux, solaris etc.. for that
matter) all think that each postgres.exe has taken that much memory up when
in reality, there is only one memory segment that is that high. iow, you
probably are well below your 'sla'.

There are some apps that can help you decipher exactly how much mem you
are using, this has been talked about before:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2009-06/msg00729.php

Good luck

--Scott