Re: We probably need autovacuum_max_wraparound_workers

On Thu, Jun 28, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> 1. Databases can inadvertently get to the state where many tables need
> wraparound vacuuming at exactly the same time, especially if they have
> many "cold" data partition tables.

This suggests that this should be handled rather earlier, and with
some attempt to not do them all simultaneously.

In effect, if there are 25 tables that will need wraparound vacuums in
the next million transactions, it is presumably beneficial to start
hitting on them right away, ideally one at a time, so as to draw their
future needs further apart.

The loose thought is that any time autovac isn't very busy, it should
consider (perhaps based on probability?) picking a table that is in a
cluster of tables that currently have wraparound needs at about the
same time, and, in effect, spread that cluster out.

I suppose there are two considerations, that conflict somewhat:
a) If there are tables that Absolutely Require wraparound vacuuming,
Right Soon Now, there's nothing to help this.  They MUST be vacuumed,
otherwise the system will get very unhappy.
b) It's undesirable to *worsen* things by 'clustering' future
wraparound vacuums together, which gets induced any time autovac is
continually vacuuming a series of tables.  If 25 tables get vacuumed
right around now, then that may cluster their next wraparound vacuum
to 2^31 transactions from 'right around now.'

But there's no helping a).

I suppose this suggests having an autovac thread that is 'devoted' to
spreading out future wraparound vacuums.

- If a *lot* of tables were just vacuumed recently, then it shouldn't
do anything, as Right Now is a cluster of 'badness.'
- It should group tables by slicing their next wraparounds (grouping
by rounding wraparound txid to the nearest, say, 10M or 20M), and
consider vacuuming a table Right Now that would take that table out of
the worst such "slice"

Thus, supposing the grouping is like:

| TxId - nearest 10 million | Tables Wrapping In Range |
|---------------------------+--------------------------|
|                         0 |                      250 |
|                         1 |                       80 |
|                         2 |                       72 |
|                         3 |                       30 |
|                         4 |                       21 |
|                         5 |                       35 |
|                         6 |                        9 |
|                         7 |                       15 |
|                         8 |                        8 |
|                         9 |                        7 |
|                        10 |                       22 |
|                        11 |                       35 |
|                        12 |                       14 |
|                        13 |                      135 |
|                        14 |                      120 |
|                        15 |                       89 |
|                        16 |                       35 |
|                        17 |                       45 |
|                        18 |                       60 |
|                        19 |                       25 |
|                        20 |                       15 |
|                        21 |                      150 |

Suppose current txid is 7500000, and the reason for there to be 250
tables in the current range is that there are a bunch of tables that
get *continually* vacuumed.  No need to worry about that range, and
I'll presume that these are all in the past.

In this example, it's crucial to, pretty soon, vacuum the 150 tables
in partition #21, as they're getting near wraparound.  Nothing to be
improved on there.  Though it would be kind of nice to start on the
150 as early as possible, so that we *might* avoid having them
dominate autovac, as in Josh Berkus' example.

But once those are done, the next "crucial" set, in partition #20, are
a much smaller set of tables.  It would be nice, at that point, to add
in a few tables from partitions #13 and #14, to smooth out the burden.
The ideal "steady state" would look like the following:

| TxId - nearest 10 million | Tables Wrapping In Range |
|---------------------------+--------------------------|
|                         0 |                      250 |
|                         1 |                       51 |
|                         2 |                       51 |
|                         3 |                       51 |
|                         4 |                       51 |
|                         5 |                       51 |
|                         6 |                       51 |
|                         7 |                       51 |
|                         8 |                       51 |
|                         9 |                       51 |
|                        10 |                       51 |
|                        11 |                       51 |
|                        12 |                       51 |
|                        13 |                       51 |
|                        14 |                       51 |
|                        15 |                       51 |
|                        16 |                       51 |
|                        17 |                       51 |
|                        18 |                       51 |
|                        19 |                       51 |
|                        20 |                       51 |
|                        21 |                       51 |

We might not get something totally smooth, but getting rid of the
*really* chunky ranges would be good.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"