Re: Purging few months old data and vacuuming in production

Hi,

We have a PostgreSQL (slightly old version, something like - PostgreSQL 11.2 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-36), 64-bit) production, where one particular table and its related 5 tables need to be purged of 3 months prior data. Each of these tables' daily record increment is on an average 2 to 3 million.

Approach needed is to do a daily purge of 90days prior data.  Probable purge processing window is expected to be 2hrs. Observed test timing for deletion is exceeding 2-3hrs and we are trying to do vacuuming after the deletes, which is again taking exceeding another 2hrs.
There is a suggestion for re-creating the tables with partitions, and as purge approach could then be a deletion/dropping of these partitions, which would not really require a vacuuming later on.

When we go for a Daily purge approach it should not put a strain on other processes which could be affecting this same set of tables, like these tables should not get locked because of the purge.

Questions are -
(a) Should we recommend PostgreSQL upgrade, if possible, to v15.1? Could this bring in some benefits related to vacuuming?
(b) Would partitioning be an optimal approach? 

Thank you,
Regards


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