From: Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Reply-To: josh@agliodbs.com
Organization: Aglio Database Solutions
To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Performance problems with large telemetric datasets on 7.4.2
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 10:56:23 -0700
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Cc: "Sven Clement" <sven@dsign.lu>
References: <881035ea0708030652r37b25a86g61e88e1f5e95eab2@mail.gmail.com>
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Sven,

> The hardware is a IBM X306m Server, 3.2 GHz HT (Pentium IV), 1 GB RAM
> and 2x 250 GB HDD (SATA-II) with ext3 fs, one of the HDD is dedicated to
> database. OS is Debian 3.1 Sarge with PostgreSQL 7.4.7 (7.4.7-6sarge1)
> with the libpq frontend library.

Note that 7.4.7 is not the current bugfix version of 7.4.x.  It is 5 or 6 
patches behind.

> So I'm asking me if it is useful to update to the actual 8.2 version and
> if we could experience performance improvement only by updating.

8.2 will give you a number of features which should greatly improve your 
performance situation:

1) partitioning: break up your main data table into smaller 
easier-to-maintain segments (this will require some application changes)

2) VACUUM delay, which lowers the impact of vacuum on concurrent queries

3) AUTOVACUUM, which helps keep your tables in reasonable maintenance.

-- 
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco