Re: shared_buffers in 8.3 w/ lots of RAM on dedicated PG machine

[Kenneth Marshall <ktm(at)rice(dot)edu>]

On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 01:35:29PM +0100, Peter Schuller wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> my impression has been that in the past, there has been a general
> semi-consensus that upping shared_buffers to use the majority of RAM
> has not generally been recommended, with reliance on the buffer cache
> instead being the recommendation.
> 
> Given the changes that have gone into 8.3, in particular with regards
> to minimizing the impact of large sequential scans, would it be
> correct to say that given that
> 
>   - enough memory is left for other PG bits (sort mems and whatnot else)
>   - only PG is running on the machine
>   - you're on 64 bit so do not run into address space issues
>   - the database working set is larger than RAM
> 
> it would be generally advisable to pump up shared_buffers pretty much
> as far as possible instead of relying on the buffer cache?
> 
> -- 
> / Peter Schuller
> 
> PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <peter(dot)schuller(at)infidyne(dot)com>'
> Key retrieval: Send an E-Mail to getpgpkey(at)scode(dot)org
> E-Mail: peter(dot)schuller(at)infidyne(dot)com Web: http://www.scode.org
> 
Peter,

PostgreSQL still depends on the OS for file access and caching. I
think that the current recommendation is to have up to 25% of your
RAM in the shared buffer cache.

Ken