Chapter 3. Device Optimization

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

• Understanding memory units in PostgreSQL
• Handling Linux/Unix memory parameters
• CPU scheduling parameters
• Device tuning parameters
• Identifying checkpoint overhead
• Analyzing buffer cache contents

Introduction

Tuning only PostgreSQL-related parameters will not be sufficient to achieve good performance from any hardware. It is also required to tune specific device-related parameters, which will greatly improve the performance of any database server. In this chapter, we will be discussing various device configurations such as CPU, memory, and disk. Most of the content in this topic will be discussing Linux-related parameters, which you may need to refer for alternative configuration section in different operating systems.