"John Lister" <john.lister-ps@kickstone.com> wrote:
> As you say, I suspect I may have had the autovacuum settings too
> low so as to avoid loading the db too much (it seems to be a
> delicate balance between having autovacuum run and slowing down
> normal use) and have upped them a little. but wanted to make sure
> that (auto)vacuum was doing what I thought before getting more
> aggressive with them
When we first started using PostgreSQL we initially had problems
with bloat and the autovacuum process started creating significant
load. Our first reaction was to make autovacuum less aggressive,
but this just made things worse. The counter-intuitive step of
making autovacuum very aggressive actually prevented bloat to the
point where autovacuum wound up creating less load. Don't be shy
about running it frequently and at low thresholds; but if it does
have a performance impact, a small autovacuum_cost_delay (I've never
needed more than 10ms) will probably solve the issue.
-Kevin