Robert Haas: Understanding and Fixing Autovacuum (PGConf.EU 2023)

Learn to optimize Autovacuum, the critical background process that maintains PostgreSQL's database health. Discover how to monitor, troubleshoot, and configure Autovacuum to ensure optimal performance and resolve common issues.

Key takeaways
  • Autovacuum is a set of background processes that automatically run vacuum and resolve any unresolved prepared transactions.
  • One function of vacuum is to allow for the reuse of transaction IDs, which helps reduce bloat in tables.
  • Monitoring autovacuum progress and activity can help identify potential issues.
  • Raising the cost limit for autovacuum can help improve performance.
  • Increasing the number of workers for autovacuum can also help improve performance.
  • Autovacuum may ignore certain tables if it determines that they do not need to be vacuumed.
  • Understanding autovacuum progress and activity can help identify issues such as slow or stuck autovacuum.
  • Monitoring autostat resets can help identify potential issues.
  • Running pg_stat_reset can help resolve issues with autovacuum.
  • Reducing the scale factor for autovacuum can help improve performance on large tables.
  • Increasing the default setting for autovacuum by a factor of 10 can help improve performance.
  • Understanding autovacuum configuration settings and adjusting them as needed can help improve performance.