I inherited a 8.1.x database of size 200GB. This database hasn't been maintained much (autovac is enabled though).
I been trying to VACUUM this db for the past few days for a couple of hours/day. The server runs 24x7 so continuous maintenance is not possible (this is the last resort).
My questions are,
> Is it possible to estimate how long VACUUM on a table might take?
> The table size is growing as "VACUUM" is being performed. I assume I need reindex after VACUUM is complete.
> I run VACUUM from psql and I Ctrl-C it to turn it off is this acceptable?
> maintenance_work_mem is at 64MB and shared_buffers at 2GB. Should I dedicate more memory to maintenance_work_mem to speedup VACUUM?
The server is a Intel Xeon 3.0GHz with 4GB RAM and RAID-5 (Yes I know).