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From: Jon Zeppieri <zeppieri@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2025 09:57:30 -0400
Message-ID: <CAKfDxxxqWnf2Wb8dg2Ytx497aPpb-eFugxYVJfC=Pi8DaciXyg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Possible causes of high_replay lag, given replication settings?
To: Nick Cleaton <nick@cleaton.net>
Cc: pgsql-general@lists.postgresql.org
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On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 4:27=E2=80=AFPM Nick Cleaton <nick@cleaton.net> wro=
te:
>
> On Fri, 18 Jul 2025 at 21:29, Jon Zeppieri <zeppieri@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I just had a situation where physical replication fell far behind
> > (hours). The write and flush lag times were 0, but replay_lag was
> > high. The replica has hot_standby_feedback on, and both
> > max_standby_streaming_delay and max_standby_archive_delay are set to
> > 30s.
> >
> > What could cause a situation like this? If the network were a problem,
> > I'd expect the other _lag times to be high. So it appears that the
> > replica was getting the WAL but was unable to apply it. Are there
> > situations where the replica cannot apply WAL other than the kinds of
> > conflicts that would be addressed by the _delay settings?
> >
> > I checked pg_stat_database_conflicts, but there was nothing in it -- al=
l zeros.
>
> This can happen when there are several busy writing processes on the
> primary. The single replay process on the replica can't keep up with
> the writes.

Thanks for the response, Nick. I'm curious why the situation you
describe wouldn't also lead to the write_lag and flush_lag also being
high. If the problem is simply keeping up with the primary, wouldn't
you expect all three lag times to be elevated?

- Jon