importance of bgwriter_percent

Hi,

I have a 64 bit Linux box with 64GB RAM and 450GB HDD. I am running a
benchmark on database of size 40GB using the following settings:
- data=writeback
- Moved wal logs to seperate partition
- settings in postgresql.conf:
               shared_buffers = 100000
        work_mem = 100000
        maintenance_work_mem = 100000
        max_fsm_pages = 200000
        bgwriter_percent = 2
        bgwriter_maxpages = 100
        fsync = false
        wal_buffers = 64
        checkpoint_segments = 2048
        checkpoint_timeout = 3600
        effective_cache_size = 1840000
        random_page_cost = 2
        geqo_threshold = 25
        geqo_effort = 1
        stats_start_collector = false
        stats_command_string = false
        stats_row_level = false
        add_missing_from = false

I am not getting good performance here as I get when I am working on a small
database of size 1GB with the following settings :
                shared_buffers = 3000
                checkpoint_segments = 256
                checkpoint_timeout= 1800
               effective_cache_size= 250000
Rest all settings are the same as above.

Here I have reduced value of some of the parameters since this database is
very small and there is hardly any background data here while for the big
database (size 40GB) there is lots of background data. I am getting a 4x
performance improvement for small database just by setting bgwriter_percent
=2 while the same setting when used against the big database is not giving
much improvement.

Do I need to increase the value of bgwriter_percent and/or bgwriter_maxpages
or there's a problem with the other settings and I need to change one of
them??
What will be a good value of bgwriter_percent for such a big database
(running 4 processes in parallel here which write to the database all at
once and which is the major bottleneck in my case)?

Regards,
Vinita Bansal



Why is this happening. Do I need

_________________________________________________________________
Expressions unlimited! http://server1.msn.co.in/sp04/messenger/ The all new
MSN Messenger!