On 02/18/2012 02:35 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
I see CheckpointWriteDelay calling BgBufferSync in 9.1. Background writing would stop during the sync phase and perhaps slow down a bit during checkpoint writing, but I don't think it was stopped completely.
The sync phase can be pretty long here--that's where the worst-case latency figures lasting many seconds are coming from. When checkpoints are happening every 60 seconds as in some of these cases, that can represent a decent percentage of time. Similarly, when the OS cache fills, the write phase might block for a larger period of time than normally expected. But, yes, you're right that my "BGW is active twice as much in 9.2" comments are overstating the reality here.
I'm collecting one last bit of data before posting another full set of results, but I'm getting more comfortable the issue here is simply changes in the BGW behavior. The performance regression tracks the background writer maximum intensity. I can match the original 9.1 performance just by dropping bgwriter_lru_maxpages, in cases where TPS drops significantly between 9.2 and 9.1. At the same time, some cases that improve between 9.1 and 9.2 perform worse if I do that. If whether 9.2 gains or loses compared to 9.1 is adjustable with a tunable parameter, with some winning and other losing at the defaults, that path forward is reasonable to deal with. The fact that pgbench is an unusual write workload is well understood, and I can write something documenting this possibility before 9.2 is officially released. I'm a lot less stressed that there's really a problem here now.
-- Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US g...@2ndquadrant.com Baltimore, MD PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support www.2ndQuadrant.com -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
