Re: WAL Archiving frequency

[Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>]

Brendan Duddridge <brendan(at)clickspace(dot)com> writes:
> I've noticed that it's archiving the 16 MB wal files about once every  
> minute. Is this normal? There's a huge number of files in my  
> wal_archives directory now.
> Is there a parameter to tell it not to archive so frequently? Or is  
> this nothing to be too concerned about?

If you've got a reasonably active database, 16MB/minute is not an
unlikely rate of WAL generation.  You can probably slow it down a bit by
increasing the checkpoint-spacing parameters, but you can't just say
"don't generate so much WAL please".  Either you want a log or you don't.

Basically, you have to take base backups often enough that the total
number of WAL archive files needed stays under your threshold of pain...

			regards, tom lane