Re: POC: Parallel processing of indexes in autovacuum

Thanks for raising this idea!

I am generally -1 on the idea of autovacuum performing parallel
index vacuum, because I always felt that the parallel option should
be employed in a targeted manner for a specific table. if you have a bunch
of large tables, some more important than others, a/c may end
up using parallel resources on the least important tables and you
will have to adjust a/v settings per table, etc to get the right table
to be parallel index vacuumed by a/v.

Also, with the TIDStore improvements for index cleanup, and the practical
elimination of multi-pass index vacuums, I see this being even less
convincing as something to add to a/v.

Now, If I am going to allocate extra workers to run vacuum in parallel, why
not just provide more autovacuum workers instead so I can get more tables
vacuumed within a span of time?

> Once we have parallel heap vacuum, as discussed in thread[1], it would
> also likely be beneficial to incorporate it into autovacuum during
> aggressive vacuum or failsafe mode.

IIRC, index cleanup is disabled by failsafe.

--
Sami Imseih
Amazon Web Services (AWS)