[REMINDER}: February Meeting 2/19/2009 - Using iostat and blktrace to analyze i/o performance

Ed Borasky will be speaking at the next PDXPUG meeting at FreeGeek (at 7:00pm -
1731 SE 10th Avenue, Portland, OR).

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Common wisdom is that "PostgreSQL applications are I/O bound."
Fortunately, Linux has two tools that make analysis of I/O performance
metrics possible: "iostat" and "blktrace". "iostat" gives device-level
operational queuing metrics, and in kernels since 2.6.25, queuing
metrics for individual partitions as well. "blktrace" provides a
detailed trace of every major event in the life of every I/O operation
at the block layer.

This talk looks at some recent "iostat" and "blktrace" results from a
single-disk workstation running "pgbench". I'll include a brief
overview of the operational queuing metrics that "iostat" gives, a
brief run-down on how to install and run "blktrace", and some sample
"blktrace" output.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there....and of course, drinks at
the Lucky Lab (http://www.luckylab.com/ ) at 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
afterwards.