Re: Performance on 8CPU's and 32GB of RAM

Carlo Stonebanks wrote:
> A client is moving their postgresql db to a brand new Windows 2003 x64
> server with 2 quad cores and 32GB of RAM. It is a dedicated server to run
> 8.2.4.

Large shared_buffers and Windows do not mix.  Perhaps you should leave
the shmem config low, so that the kernel can cache the file pages.

> The server typically will have less than 10 users. The primary use of this
> server is to host a database that is continuously being updated by data
> consolidation and matching software software that hits the server very
> hard. There are typically eight such processes running at any one time. The
> software extensively exploits postgresql native fuzzy string for data
> matching. The SQL is dynamically generated by the software and consists of
> large, complex joins. (the structure of the joins change as the software
> adapts its matching strategies).

It sounds like you will need a huge lot of vacuuming effort to keep up.
Maybe you should lower autovac scale factors so that your tables are
visited more frequently.  A vacuum_delay of 40 sounds like too much
though.

Since you didn't describe your disk configuration, it is most likely not
really prepared to handle high I/O load.  Maybe you should fix that.

--
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support