Re: pg_restore --multi-thread

On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 09:33 -0500, Andrew Dunstan wrote:

> The short answer is that we don't know yet. There is anecdotal evidence
> that the number of CPUs on the server is a good place to start, but we
> should be honest enough to say that this is a new feature and we are
> still gathering information about its performance. If you want to give
> some advice, then I think the best advice is to try a variety of
> settings to see what works best for you, and if you have a good set of
> figures report it back to us.

There has been some fairly heavy testing and research that caused the
patch in the first place. The thread is here:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-02/msg00695.php

It is a long thread. The end was result was the fastest restore time for
220G was performed with 24 threads with an 8 core box. It came in at 3.5
hours.

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-02/msg01092.php

It is important to point out that this was a machine with 50 spindles.
Which is where your bottleneck is going to be immediately after solving
the CPU bound nature of the problem.

So although the CPU question is easily answered, the IO is not. IO is
extremely variable in its performance.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

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