Tuning PostgreSQL for very large database

[René Fournier <m5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just wondering what I can do to squeeze out more performance of my database application? Here's my configuration:

- Mac mini server

- Core i7 quad-core at 2GHz

- 16GB memory
- Dedicated fast SSD (two SSDs in the server)

- Mac OS X 10.7.2 (*not* using OS X Server)

- PostgreSQL 9.05

- PostGIS 1.5.3 

- Tiger Geocoder 2010 database (from build scripts from http://svn.osgeo.org/postgis/trunk/extras/tiger_geocoder/tiger_2010/)

- Database size: ~90GB

I should say, this box does more than PostgreSQL geocoding/reverse-geocoding, so reasonably only half of the memory should be allotted to PostgreSQL.

Coming from MySQL, I would normally play with the my.cnf, using my-huge.cnf as a start. But I'm new to PostgreSQL and PostGIS (w/ a big database), so I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on tuning parameters (also, which files, etc.) Thanks!

…Rene