Re: Running PostgreSQL as fast as possible no matter the consequences

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
> Chris Browne wrote:
>> gentosaker@gmail.com (A B) writes:
>> > If you just wanted PostgreSQL to go as fast as possible WITHOUT any
>> > care for your data (you accept 100% dataloss and datacorruption if any
>> > error should occur), what settings should you use then?
>>
>> Use /dev/null.  It is web scale, and there are good tutorials.
>>
>> But seriously, there *are* cases where "blind speed" is of use.  When
>> loading data into a fresh database is a good time for this; if things
>> fall over, it may be pretty acceptable to start "from scratch" with
>> mkfs/initdb.
>>
>> I'd:
>> - turn off fsync
>> - turn off synchronous commit
>> - put as much as possible onto Ramdisk/tmpfs/similar as possible
>
> FYI, we do have a documentation section about how to configure Postgres
> for improved performance if you don't care about durability:
>
>        http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/non-durability.html

This sentence looks to me like it should be removed, or perhaps clarified:

This does affect database crash transaction durability.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company