I have proceeded to do some more checking, and I see in iostat that the pg_xlog drive has a significantly higher busy
statethan before. Whereas it was barely busy when we first spun up the server (total %busy since we started the server
isabout 6%) it is now in its 80's almost steady state. We have a set of partitioned tables which are continuously
updated,and based on the size of them they no longer fit in the shared memory which was allocated. Pg_xlog is in a SAS
RAID1. The server is set up with streaming replication to an identical server. The one thing which I just checked is
theRAID mode on the server.
db1# megacli64 -LDInfo -lAll -aAll
Adapter 0 -- Virtual Drive Information:
Virtual Drive: 0 (Target Id: 0)
Name :
RAID Level : Primary-1, Secondary-0, RAID Level Qualifier-0
Size : 2.452 TB
State : Optimal
Strip Size : 256 KB
Number Of Drives per span:2
Span Depth : 6
Default Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU
Current Cache Policy: WriteThrough, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU
Access Policy : Read/Write
Disk Cache Policy : Disk's Default
Encryption Type : None
Virtual Drive: 1 (Target Id: 1)
Name :
RAID Level : Primary-1, Secondary-0, RAID Level Qualifier-0
Size : 418.656 GB
State : Optimal
Strip Size : 256 KB
Number Of Drives : 2
Span Depth : 1
Default Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU
Current Cache Policy: WriteThrough, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU
Access Policy : Read/Write
Disk Cache Policy : Disk's Default
Encryption Type : None
Is it possible that the WriteThrough is what is causing the high io (and maybe the pgstat wait timeouts as well)?
If this is the case, would it be safe to change the cache to Write back?
Additionally, and somewhat unrelated, is there anything special which I need to do when restarting the primary server
vis-à-visthe streaming replication server? In other words, if I were to restart the main server, will the streaming
replicationserver reconnect and pick up once the primary comes online?
