Yes, regular versus full vacuum. Thanks for the comment but I was hoping to come to that conclusion on my own by observing the affects of the different vacuums.
My original question was guidance on collecting data for confirmation on the impact that maintenance of a large database (as a result of my applications regular usage over a period of time) has.
I can du the various tables and compare their size before/after against the verbose output of a VACUUM FULL. I can use sar during all of this to monitor cpu and i/o activity. I can turn on transaction logging once I get a better idea of maintenance impact on my hardware so identify the biggest transactions that might statement timeout if a VACUUM was running at the same time.
Any suggestions or comments related to collection of this type of data would be helpful. I've already read the Postges 7.4 (yes, I'm stuck on 7.4) manual, I was hoping for this mail-list' wisdom to supply me with some tips that can only be learnt through painful experience. :-)
Thanks.
- Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim C. Nasby [mailto:jnasby@pervasive.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 3:25 PM
To: Chris Mckenzie
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PERFORM] Performance/Maintenance test result collection
On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 01:50:22PM -0400, Chris Mckenzie wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I'm trying to plan for a performance test session where a large
> database is subject to regular hits from my application while both
> regular and full database maintenance is being performed. The idea is
> to gain a better idea on the impact maintenance will have on regular
> usage, and when to reasonably schedule both regular and full
> maintenance.
What do you mean by "regular and full maintenance"? Do you mean VACUUM FULL?
If you're vacuuming appropriately you shouldn't have any need to ever VACUUM FULL...
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461