Hi, I moved a DB between two "somewhat" similar Postgres installs and am getting much worse plans on the second. The DB was dumped via pg_dump (keeping indexes, etc.) and loaded to the new server.
The first (installed via emerge): select version(); PostgreSQL 9.4rc1 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-gcc (Gentoo 4.7.3-r1 p1.4, pie-0.5.5) 4.7.3, 64-bit The second (installed from the Postgres centos repo) : select version(); PostgreSQL 9.4.4 on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-11), 64-bit SHOW ALL; gives identical results on both - I increased several values on both servers: max_connections = 300 shared_buffers = 16GB temp_buffers = 128MB work_mem = 128MB seq_page_cost = 0.5 random_page_cost = 1.0 effective_cache_size = 16GB The first machine has 32GB of RAM and 16 cores (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650 v2 @ 2.60GHz) and the second 96GB of RAM and 24 cores (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2430L v2 @ 2.40GHz). I have a series of python scripts (including a Django site) also on the machine but did before also - load shouldn't have changed (there were some external backups on the other machine and on the new machine only my DB + scripts). dd performance is similar for sizes under the RAM size: oldserver:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=output.img bs=8k count=256k 262144+0 records in 262144+0 records out 2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 2.04997 s, 1.0 GB/s oldserver:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=output.img bs=8k count=1M 1048576+0 records in 1048576+0 records out 8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB) copied, 13.7105 s, 627 MB/s [newserver ~]$ dd if=/dev/zero of=output.img bs=8k count=256k 262144+0 records in 262144+0 records out 2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 2.03452 s, 1.1 GB/s [newserver ~]$ dd if=/dev/zero of=output.img bs=8k count=1M 1048576+0 records in 1048576+0 records out 8589934592 bytes (8.6 GB) copied, 21.4785 s, 400 MB/s But significantly better on the new machine over the RAM size: oldserver:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=output.img bs=8k count=5M 5242880+0 records in 5242880+0 records out 42949672960 bytes (43 GB) copied, 478.037 s, 89.8 MB/s [newserver ~]$ dd if=/dev/zero of=output.img bs=8k count=15M 15728640+0 records in 15728640+0 records out 128849018880 bytes (129 GB) copied, 256.748 s, 502 MB/s I get the following plan on the old machine for a query: oldserver=# explain analyze select count(0) from (select message_id, count(0) from accepted where message_id like '20151213%' group by message_id having count(0) > 1) as toto; QUERY PLAN ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aggregate (cost=734.26..734.27 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=2519.545..2519.546 rows=1 loops=1) -> GroupAggregate (cost=0.70..452.90 rows=22509 width=46) (actual time=2519.542..2519.542 rows=0 loops=1) Group Key: accepted.message_id Filter: (count(0) > 1) Rows Removed by Filter: 1289815 -> Index Only Scan using idx_accepted2_mid on accepted (cost=0.70..2.72 rows=22509 width=46) (actual time=0.037..1613.982 rows=1289815 loops=1) Index Cond: ((message_id >= '20151213'::text) AND (message_id < '20151214'::text)) Filter: ((message_id)::text ~~ '20151213%'::text) Heap Fetches: 1289815 Planning time: 0.325 ms Execution time: 2519.610 ms (11 rows) Time: 2520.534 ms On the new machine, I was originally getting: newserver=# explain analyze select count(0) from (select message_id, count(0) from accepted where message_id like '20151213%' group by message_id having count(0) > 1) as toto; QUERY PLAN ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aggregate (cost=8018044.22..8018044.23 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=123964.197..123964.197 rows=1 loops=1) -> GroupAggregate (cost=7935128.17..7988431.35 rows=2369030 width=46) (actual time=123964.195..123964.195 rows=0 loops=1) Group Key: accepted.message_id Filter: (count(0) > 1) Rows Removed by Filter: 1289817 -> Sort (cost=7935128.17..7941050.75 rows=2369030 width=46) (actual time=123112.260..123572.412 rows=1289817 loops=1) Sort Key: accepted.message_id Sort Method: external merge Disk: 70920kB -> Seq Scan on accepted (cost=0.00..7658269.38 rows=2369030 width=46) (actual time=4450.097..105171.191 rows=1289817 loops=1) Filter: ((message_id)::text ~~ '20151213%'::text) Rows Removed by Filter: 232872643 Planning time: 0.145 ms Execution time: 123995.671 ms But after a vacuum analyze got: newserver=# explain analyze select count(0) from (select message_id, count(0) from accepted where message_id like '20151213%' group by message_id having count(0) > 1) as toto; QUERY PLAN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Aggregate (cost=6210972.24..6210972.25 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=93052.551..93052.551 rows=1 loops=1) -> GroupAggregate (cost=0.70..6181400.28 rows=2365757 width=46) (actual time=93052.548..93052.548 rows=0 loops=1) Group Key: accepted.message_id Filter: (count(0) > 1) Rows Removed by Filter: 1289817 -> Index Only Scan using idx_accepted2_mid on accepted (cost=0.70..6134085.13 rows=2365757 width=46) (actual time=41992.489..92674.187 rows=1289817 loops=1) Filter: ((message_id)::text ~~ '20151213%'::text) Rows Removed by Filter: 232920074 Heap Fetches: 0 Planning time: 0.634 ms Execution time: 93052.605 ms (11 rows) Time: 93078.267 ms So at least it appears to be using the index (btree, non-unique) - but it's not using the >= + < trick which appears to drastically reduce execution time. messag_ids start with the date. If I manually use > and <, then the plans and approx performance are the same: newserver=# explain analyze select count(0) from (select message_id, count(0) from accepted where message_id > '20151213' and message_id < '20151214' group by message_id having count(0) > 1) as toto; QUERY PLAN ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aggregate (cost=72044.92..72044.93 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=1205.840..1205.840 rows=1 loops=1) -> GroupAggregate (cost=0.70..57367.34 rows=1174206 width=46) (actual time=1205.838..1205.838 rows=0 loops=1) Group Key: accepted.message_id Filter: (count(0) > 1) Rows Removed by Filter: 1289817 -> Index Only Scan using idx_accepted2_mid on accepted (cost=0.70..33883.22 rows=1174206 width=46) (actual time=7.558..852.394 rows=1289817 loops=1) Index Cond: ((message_id > '20151213'::text) AND (message_id < '20151214'::text)) Heap Fetches: 91 Planning time: 0.232 ms Execution time: 1205.890 ms (10 rows) Time: 1225.515 ms Does anyone have any ideas? All data are loaded into this table via copy and no updates are done. Autovacuum settings weren't changed (and is on both). Do I need to increase shared_buffers to half of available memory for the planner to make certain optimisations? Anything else I'm missing or can try? The new server has been running for almost two weeks now so I would have thought things would have had a chance to settle down. Cheers, Anton