On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 10:15:57AM -0600, k...@rice.edu wrote: > On Fri, Jan 02, 2015 at 01:01:06PM +0100, Andres Freund wrote: > > On 2014-12-31 16:09:31 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > > I still don't understand the value of adding WAL compression, given the > > > high CPU usage and minimal performance improvement. The only big > > > advantage is WAL storage, but again, why not just compress the WAL file > > > when archiving. > > > > before: pg_xlog is 800GB > > after: pg_xlog is 600GB. > > > > I'm damned sure that many people would be happy with that, even if the > > *per backend* overhead is a bit higher. And no, compression of archives > > when archiving helps *zap* with that (streaming, wal_keep_segments, > > checkpoint_timeout). As discussed before. > > > > Greetings, > > > > Andres Freund > > > > +1 > > On an I/O constrained system assuming 50:50 table:WAL I/O, in the case > above you can process 100GB of transaction data at the cost of a bit > more CPU.
OK, so given your stats, the feature give a 12.5% reduction in I/O. If that is significant, shouldn't we see a performance improvement? If we don't see a performance improvement, is I/O reduction worthwhile? Is it valuable in that it gives non-database applications more I/O to use? Is that all? I suggest we at least document that this feature as mostly useful for I/O reduction, and maybe say CPU usage and performance might be negatively impacted. OK, here is the email I remember from Fujii Masao this same thread that showed a performance improvement for WAL compression: http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAHGQGwGqG8e9YN0fNCUZqTTT=hnr7ly516kft5ffqf4pp1q...@mail.gmail.com Why are we not seeing the 33% compression and 15% performance improvement he saw? What am I missing here? -- Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com + Everyone has their own god. + -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers