Re: Load Distributed Checkpoints, take 3

Heikki Linnakangas <heikki@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> (BTW, the patch seems
>> a bit schizoid about whether checkpoint_rate is int or float.)

> Yeah, I've gone back and forth on the data type. I wanted it to be a
> float, but guc code doesn't let you specify a float in KB, so I switched
> it to int.

I seriously question trying to claim that it's blocks at all, seeing
that the *actual* units are pages per unit time.  Pretending that it's
a memory unit does more to obscure the truth than document it.

>> What's bugging me about this is that we are either going to be writing
>> at checkpoint_rate if ahead of schedule, or max possible rate if behind;
>> that's not "smoothing" to me, that's introducing some pretty bursty
>> behavior.

> That sounds a lot more complex. The burstiness at that level shouldn't
> matter much. The OS is still going to cache the writes, and should even
> out the bursts.

With the changes you're proposing here, the burstiness would be quite
severe.  OTOH, if writes_per_nap is always 1, then bufmgr is going to
recheck the delay situation after every page, so what you have actually
tested is as granular as it could get.

>> And checkpoint_rate really needs to be named checkpoint_min_rate, if
>> it's going to be a minimum.  However, I question whether we need it at
>> all,

> Hmm. With bgwriter_delay of 200 ms, and checkpoint_min_rate of 512 KB/s,
>   using the non-broken formula above, we get:

> (512*1024/8192) * 200 / 1000 = 12.8, truncated to 12.

> So I think that's fine.

"Fine?"  That's 12x the value you have actually tested.  That's enough
of a change to invalidate all your performance testing IMHO.  I still
think you've not demonstrated a need to expose this parameter.

            regards, tom lane