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Tuning Checkpoints
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* Tuning Checkpoints
@ 2016-10-31 19:19 Andre Henry <ahenry@thinkthroughmath.com>
  2016-10-31 21:59 ` Re: Tuning Checkpoints Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 2+ messages in thread

From: Andre Henry @ 2016-10-31 19:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: pgsql-performance

My PG 9.4.5 server runs on Amazon RDS some times of the day we have a lot of checkpoints really close (less than 1 minute apart, see logs below) and we are trying to tune the DB to minimize the impact of the checkpoint or reduce the number of checkpoints.

Server Stats
·         Instance Type db.r3.4xl
•         16 vCPUs 122GB of RAM
•         PostgreSQL 9.4.5 on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 4.8.2 20140120 (Red Hat 4.8.2-16), 64-bit

Some PG Stats
•         Shared Buffers = 31427608kB
•         Checkpoint Segments = 64
•         Checkpoint completion target = .9
•         Rest of the configuration is below

Things we are doing
•         We have a huge table where each row is over 1kB and its very busy. We are splitting that into multiple tables especially the one json field that making it large.

Questions
•         Each checkpoint log writes out the following checkpoint complete: wrote 166481 buffers (4.2%); 0 transaction log file(s) added, 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=32.441 s, sync=0.050 s, total=32.550 s; sync files=274, longest=0.049 s, average=0.000 s
•         What does buffers mean? How do I find out how much RAM that is equivalent to?
•         Based on my RDS stats I don't think IOPs will help, because I don't see any flat lines on my write operations / second graph. Is this a good assumption?
•         What else can we tune to spread out checkpoints?

Here is the Postgres configuration

application_name                       | psql
archive_mode                           | on
 archive_timeout                        | 5min
 autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor        | 0.05
 autovacuum_naptime                     | 30s
 autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor         | 0.1
 checkpoint_completion_target           | 0.9
 checkpoint_segments                    | 64
 client_encoding                        | UTF8
 effective_cache_size                   | 62855216kB
 fsync                                  | on
 full_page_writes                       | on
 hot_standby                            | off
 listen_addresses                       | *
 lo_compat_privileges                   | off
 log_checkpoints                        | on
 log_error_verbosity                    | default
 log_file_mode                          | 0644
 log_hostname                           | on
 log_line_prefix                        | %t:%r:%u@%d:[%p]:
 log_rotation_age                       | 1h
 log_timezone                           | UTC
 log_truncate_on_rotation               | off
 logging_collector                      | on
 maintenance_work_mem                   | 250MB
 max_connections                        | 4092
 max_locks_per_transaction              | 64
 max_prepared_transactions              | 0
 max_replication_slots                  | 5
 max_stack_depth                        | 6MB
 max_wal_senders                        | 10
 port                                   | 5432
 rds.extensions                         | btree_gin,btree_gist,chkpass,citext,cube,dblink,dict_int,dict_xsyn,earthdistance,fuzzystrmatch,hstore,intagg,intarray,ip4r,isn,ltree,pgcrypto,pgrowlocks,pgstattuple,pg_buffercache,pg_prewarm,pg_stat_statements,pg_trgm,plcoffee,plls,plperl,plpgsql,pltcl,plv8,postgis,postgis_tiger_geocoder,postgis_topology,postgres_fdw,sslinfo,tablefunc,test_parser,tsearch2,unaccent,uuid-ossp
 rds.internal_databases                 | rdsadmin,template0
 rds.rds_superuser_reserved_connections | 0
 rds.superuser_variables                | session_replication_role
 shared_buffers                         | 31427608kB
 ssl                                    | on
ssl_renegotiation_limit                | 0
 superuser_reserved_connections         | 3
 synchronous_commit                     | off
 TimeZone                               | UTC
 unix_socket_group                      | rdsdb
 unix_socket_permissions                | 0700
 wal_keep_segments                      | 32
 wal_level                              | hot_standby
 wal_receiver_timeout                   | 30s
 wal_sender_timeout                     | 30s
 work_mem                               | 8MB

Here are some checkpoint logs from a busy period

2016-10-26 18:54:32 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint starting: xlog
2016-10-26 18:55:10 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint complete: wrote 168357 buffers (4.3%); 0 transaction log file(s) added, 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=37.650 s, sync=0.036 s, total=37.879 s; sync files=266, longest=0.027 s, average=0.000 s
2016-10-26 18:55:15 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint starting: xlog
2016-10-26 18:55:53 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint complete: wrote 171087 buffers (4.4%); 0 transaction log file(s) added, 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=38.147 s, sync=0.116 s, total=38.298 s; sync files=276, longest=0.098 s, average=0.000 s
2016-10-26 18:55:58 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint starting: xlog
2016-10-26 18:56:34 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint complete: wrote 171131 buffers (4.4%); 0 transaction log file(s) added, 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=35.080 s, sync=0.142 s, total=35.323 s; sync files=274, longest=0.103 s, average=0.000 s
2016-10-26 18:56:39 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint starting: xlog
2016-10-26 18:57:14 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint complete: wrote 158818 buffers (4.0%); 0 transaction log file(s) added, 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=35.545 s, sync=0.072 s, total=35.771 s; sync files=277, longest=0.036 s, average=0.000 s
2016-10-26 18:57:19 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint starting: xlog
2016-10-26 18:57:56 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint complete: wrote 179405 buffers (4.6%); 0 transaction log file(s) added, 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=36.289 s, sync=0.069 s, total=36.405 s; sync files=295, longest=0.030 s, average=0.000 s
2016-10-26 18:58:01 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint starting: xlog
2016-10-26 18:58:37 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint complete: wrote 169711 buffers (4.3%); 0 transaction log file(s) added, 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=35.248 s, sync=0.199 s, total=35.511 s; sync files=295, longest=0.146 s, average=0.000 s
2016-10-26 18:58:42 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint starting: xlog
2016-10-26 18:59:17 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint complete: wrote 174124 buffers (4.4%); 0 transaction log file(s) added, 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=34.666 s, sync=0.059 s, total=34.790 s; sync files=279, longest=0.051 s, average=0.000 s
2016-10-26 18:59:23 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint starting: xlog
2016-10-26 18:59:55 UTC::@:[5594]:LOG:  checkpoint complete: wrote 166481 buffers (4.2%); 0 transaction log file(s) added, 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=32.441 s, sync=0.050 s, total=32.550 s; sync files=274, longest=0.049 s, average=0.000 s


^ permalink  raw  reply  [nested|flat] 2+ messages in thread

* Re: Tuning Checkpoints
  2016-10-31 19:19 Tuning Checkpoints Andre Henry <ahenry@thinkthroughmath.com>
@ 2016-10-31 21:59 ` Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread

From: Tomas Vondra @ 2016-10-31 21:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: pgsql-performance

On 10/31/2016 08:19 PM, Andre Henry wrote:
> My PG 9.4.5 server runs on Amazon RDS some times of the day we have a
> lot of checkpoints really close (less than 1 minute apart, see logs
> below) and we are trying to tune the DB to minimize the impact of the
> checkpoint or reduce the number of checkpoints.
>
> Server Stats
>
> ·         Instance Type db.r3.4xl
>
> •         16 vCPUs 122GB of RAM
>
> •         PostgreSQL 9.4.5 on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc
> (GCC) 4.8.2 20140120 (Red Hat 4.8.2-16), 64-bit
>
>
>
> Some PG Stats
>
> •         Shared Buffers = 31427608kB
>
> •         Checkpoint Segments = 64
>
> •         Checkpoint completion target = .9
>
> •         Rest of the configuration is below
>
>
>
> Things we are doing
>
> •         We have a huge table where each row is over 1kB and its very
> busy. We are splitting that into multiple tables especially the one json
> field that making it large.
>
>
>
> Questions
>
> •         Each checkpoint log writes out the following checkpoint
> complete: wrote 166481 buffers (4.2%); 0 transaction log file(s) added,
> 0 removed, 64 recycled; write=32.441 s, sync=0.050 s, total=32.550 s;
> sync files=274, longest=0.049 s, average=0.000 s
>

OK, each checkpoint has to write all dirty data from checkpoints. You 
have ~170k buffers worth of dirty data, i.e. ~1.3GB.

> •         What does buffers mean? How do I find out how much RAM that is
> equivalent to?
>

Buffer holds 8kB of data, which is the "chunk" of data files.

> •         Based on my RDS stats I don't think IOPs will help, because I
> don't see any flat lines on my write operations / second graph. Is this
> a good assumption?
>

Not sure what you mean by this. Also, maybe you should talk to AWS if 
you're on RDS.

> •         What else can we tune to spread out checkpoints?
>

Based on the logs, your checkpoints are triggered by filling WAL. I see 
your checkpoints happen every 30 - 40 seconds, and you only have 64 
segments.

So to get checkpoints checkpoints triggered by timeout (which I assume 
is 5 minutes, because you have not mentioned checkpoint_timeout), you 
need to increase checkpoint_segments enough to hold 5 minutes worth of WAL.

That means 300/30 * 64, i.e. roughly 640 segments (it's likely an 
overestimate, due to full page writes, but well).

regards

-- 
Tomas Vondra                  http://www.2ndQuadrant.com
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services


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