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Where is my bottleneck?
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* Where is my bottleneck?
@ 2006-01-24 18:40  Arnau Rebassa Villalonga <arebassa@androme.es>
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 6+ messages in thread

From: Arnau Rebassa Villalonga @ 2006-01-24 18:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: pgsql-performance

Hi all,

   I have a performance problem and I don't know where is my bottleneck.
I have postgresql 7.4.2 running on a debian server with kernel
2.4.26-1-686-smp with two Xeon(TM) at 2.80GHz and 4GB of RAM and a RAID
5 made with SCSI disks. Maybe its not the latest hardware but I think
it's not that bad.

   My problem is that the general performance is not good enough and I
don't know where is the bottleneck. It could be because the queries are
not optimized as they should be, but I also think it can be a postgresql
configuration problem or hardware problem (HDs not beeing fast enough,
not enough RAM, ... )

   The configuration of postgresql is the default, I tried to tune the
postgresql.conf and the results where disappointing, so I left again the
default values.

When I do top I get:
top - 19:10:24 up 452 days, 15:48,  4 users,  load average: 6.31, 6.27, 6.52
Tasks:  91 total,   8 running,  83 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  24.8% user,  15.4% system,   0.0% nice,  59.9% idle
Mem:   3748956k total,  3629252k used,   119704k free,    57604k buffers
Swap:  2097136k total,    14188k used,  2082948k free,  3303620k cached

   Most of the time the idle value is even higher than 60%.

I know it's a  problem with a very big scope, but could you give me a
hint about where I should look to?


Thank you very much
-- 
Arnau




^ permalink  raw  reply  [nested|flat] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: Where is my bottleneck?
@ 2006-01-30 09:25  Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com>
  parent: Arnau Rebassa Villalonga <arebassa@androme.es>
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread

From: Richard Huxton @ 2006-01-30 09:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: arnaulist@andromeiberica.com; +Cc: pgsql-performance

Arnau Rebassa Villalonga wrote:
> 
>   The configuration of postgresql is the default, I tried to tune the
> postgresql.conf and the results where disappointing, so I left again the
> default values.

That's the first thing to fix. Go to the page below and read through the 
  "Performance Tuning" article.
http://www.varlena.com/varlena/GeneralBits/Tidbits/index.php

-- 
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd



^ permalink  raw  reply  [nested|flat] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: Where is my bottleneck?
@ 2006-01-30 11:00  Michael Stone <mstone+postgres@mathom.us>
  parent: Arnau Rebassa Villalonga <arebassa@androme.es>
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread

From: Michael Stone @ 2006-01-30 11:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: pgsql-performance

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 07:40:22PM +0100, Arnau Rebassa Villalonga wrote:
>   I have a performance problem and I don't know where is my bottleneck.
[snip]
>   Most of the time the idle value is even higher than 60%.

It's generally a fairly safe bet that if you are running slow and your 
cpu is idle, your i/o isn't fast enough.

Mike Stone



^ permalink  raw  reply  [nested|flat] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: Where is my bottleneck?
@ 2006-01-30 16:49  Luke Lonergan <llonergan@greenplum.com>
  parent: Arnau Rebassa Villalonga <arebassa@androme.es>
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread

From: Luke Lonergan @ 2006-01-30 16:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: arnaulist@andromeiberica.com; pgsql-performance

Arnau,

On 1/24/06 10:40 AM, "Arnau Rebassa Villalonga" <arebassa@androme.es> wrote:

> I know it's a  problem with a very big scope, but could you give me a
> hint about where I should look to?

Try this:

  time bash -c "dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile bs=8k count=2000000 && sync"
  time dd if=bigfile of=/dev/null bs=8k

And report the results back here.  If it takes too long to complete (more
than a couple of minutes), bring up another window and run "vmstat 1" then
report the values in the columns "bi" and "bo".

- Luke





^ permalink  raw  reply  [nested|flat] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: Where is my bottleneck?
@ 2006-01-30 20:10  Jim C. Nasby <jnasby@pervasive.com>
  parent: Arnau Rebassa Villalonga <arebassa@androme.es>
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread

From: Jim C. Nasby @ 2006-01-30 20:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: arnaulist@andromeiberica.com; +Cc: pgsql-performance

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 07:40:22PM +0100, Arnau Rebassa Villalonga wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>   I have a performance problem and I don't know where is my bottleneck.
> I have postgresql 7.4.2 running on a debian server with kernel

You should really upgrade to the latest 7.4 version. You're probably
vulnerable to some data-loss issues.

> 2.4.26-1-686-smp with two Xeon(TM) at 2.80GHz and 4GB of RAM and a RAID
> 5 made with SCSI disks. Maybe its not the latest hardware but I think

Generally speaking, databases (or anything else that does a lot of
random writes) don't like RAID5.

>   My problem is that the general performance is not good enough and I
> don't know where is the bottleneck. It could be because the queries are
> not optimized as they should be, but I also think it can be a postgresql
> configuration problem or hardware problem (HDs not beeing fast enough,
> not enough RAM, ... )

What kind of performance are you expecting? What are you actually
seeing?

>   The configuration of postgresql is the default, I tried to tune the
> postgresql.conf and the results where disappointing, so I left again the
> default values.

Probably not so good... you'll most likely want to tune shared_buffers,
sort_mem and effective_cache_size at a minimum. Granted, that might not
be your current bottleneck, but it would probably be your next.
-- 
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant      jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software      http://pervasive.com    work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf       cell: 512-569-9461



^ permalink  raw  reply  [nested|flat] 6+ messages in thread

* Re: Where is my bottleneck?
@ 2006-02-02 12:14  Markus Schaber <schabi@logix-tt.com>
  parent: Michael Stone <mstone+postgres@mathom.us>
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread

From: Markus Schaber @ 2006-02-02 12:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Michael Stone <mstone+postgres@mathom.us>; +Cc: pgsql-performance

Hi, Michael,

Michael Stone wrote:

>>   I have a performance problem and I don't know where is my bottleneck.
> 
> [snip]
> 
>>   Most of the time the idle value is even higher than 60%.
> 
> It's generally a fairly safe bet that if you are running slow and your
> cpu is idle, your i/o isn't fast enough.

Or the query is misoptimized (low work_mem, missing indices) and cause
much more I/O than necessary.

HTH,
Markus

-- 
Markus Schaber | Logical Tracking&Tracing International AG
Dipl. Inf.     | Software Development GIS

Fight against software patents in EU! www.ffii.org www.nosoftwarepatents.org



^ permalink  raw  reply  [nested|flat] 6+ messages in thread


end of thread, other threads:[~2006-02-02 12:14 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 6+ messages (download: mbox mbox.gz follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2006-01-24 18:40 Where is my bottleneck? Arnau Rebassa Villalonga <arebassa@androme.es>
2006-01-30 09:25 ` Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com>
2006-01-30 11:00 ` Michael Stone <mstone+postgres@mathom.us>
2006-02-02 12:14   ` Markus Schaber <schabi@logix-tt.com>
2006-01-30 16:49 ` Luke Lonergan <llonergan@greenplum.com>
2006-01-30 20:10 ` Jim C. Nasby <jnasby@pervasive.com>

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