Hi there, We've recently started seeing some context switch storm issues on our primary Postgres database, and I was wondering if anyone had encountered similar issues or had any ideas as to what could be causing these issues. The machine configuration is: 8xIntel Xeon Harpertown 5430 (2.66GHz) 32Gb of RAM 10xRAID10 (15k RPM, SAS) for Postgres RHEL 5.2 (2.6.18-92.1.10.el5) + deadline scheduler We're running Postgres 8.3.4. Some postgresql.conf settings: shared_buffers = 10922MB effective_cache_size = 19200MB default_statistics_target = 100 The database is about 150Gb in size (according to pg_database_size.) Our workload is probably something like 98% reads / 2% writes. Most of our queries are fast, short-lived SELECTs across 5 tables. Some performance numbers during "normal" times and when the CS storm is in progress: Normal load: Req/s - 3326 - 3630 Average query runtime - 4729 us - 7415 us count(*) from pg_locks - 10 - 200 Context switches/s - 12k - 21k During CS storm: Req/s - 2362 - 3054 Average query runtime - 20731 us - 103387 us count(*) from pg_locks - 1000 - 1400 Context switches/s - 38k - 55k During the CS storm period, 99% of locks are granted = t, mode = AccessShareLock across the 5 most commonly read tables (and their indexes). In one sample of pg_locks, there was only one RowExclusiveLock on a less frequently read table. We used to use a 16-way Intel Xeon Tigerton in this machine, but Postgres would basically become unresponsive under 120k - 200k context switches/s, so we switched to the 8-way Harpertown. The problems disappeared, but they've now come back. :) I asked Gavin S and Neil C about this issue before mailing the list -- Gavin said this was a known issue which was hard to reproduce, and Neil said that most (all known?) context switch issues were fixed in 8.2+. We can pretty much reproduce this consistently, though it doesn't happen *all* the time (maybe 2-4 hours every week). Postgres is the only thing running on the machine -- and at the time of these CS spikes autovacuum is not running and there was no checkpoint in progress. Please let me know if any further information is needed, or if there's anything I can do to try and gain more insight into the cause of these CS storms. Thanks! Regards, Omar -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
