PostgreSQL 9.0 createdb Revelations (Updated)
2011-08-27 15:18:16 by jdixon
One of my first projects at Heroku has been to modernize our shared PostgreSQL offering (working with @asenchi). As we get closer to internal testing of our new service, @markimbriaco asked for benchmarks looking for any bottlenecks in PostgreSQL 9.x when creating large quantities of small databases. We've seen instances where Pg 8.3 will start to choke after 2000 databases on the same server and we're hoping that 9.x alleviates this issue.
My initial test was overly simplistic but still revealed some interesting patterns. I started with createdb on the command-line, generating 8000 roles and empty databases, serially. The results were promising, with PostgreSQL 9.0.4 (Ubuntu 10.04) able to scale up without any noticeably increasing latency. Unfortunately, it's not a terribly useful benchmark given the absence of any workload. And yet, I couldn't help but notice a pattern in the scatter plot:
Notice the gap between 500 and 600 ms? I don't have an explanation for this but I suspected that Pg has an internal condition that triggers for actions that take 500ms or longer. Regardless, our primary expectations had been met. Whatever bottleneck 8.3 demonstrated when creating databases on a server with large quantities of existing small databases appears to be fixed in 9.0.
The next test was to run a similar sequence with our new application server. It offers an internal RESTful API using Sinatra and Sequel to provision and manage customer databases on shared servers. The results for this run were even more enlightening. Check out the stratification:
Not only is the initial gap (around 400ms) even more pronounced, but you can see a pattern of latency introduced at 200ms intervals after the initial 400ms delay. I have no explanation for this, but I wanted to publish these results and see if anyone else has a guess as to what might be causing these patterns.
UPDATE: To rule out any distortion caused by GNU time, I ran another test using Ruby's Time class to get a more accurate representation. In the most simple terms, we start the clock with Time.now, connect to the database (no caching), create a role, create the database and stop the clock. Output is logged and then imported into Excel for plotting. I think the results speak for themselves (measured in milliseconds):
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One Happy Ending
2011-08-25 12:47:34 by jdixon
Chances are you don't already know this about me, but I have a son who experienced a volvulus when he was three years old. This is a dangerous obstruction of the bowel caused by congenital intestinal malrotation (in other words, the bowels get "twisted" during fetal development). If the condition turns into a volvulus, the constricted portion of bowel will lose blood flow and die. In my son's case, he lost a significant portion of his large and small intestines. To be blunt, he was within minutes of death.
Nathan was unconscious in critical care for two weeks weeks, in the hospital for seven months, and has been back at home trying to resume a normal life for the past three years. It would be an understatement to describe this as a taxing experience for our entire family. The first couple years required my wife to quit her job and become his home nurse. Either of us would be up all hours of the night administering drugs, vitamins and refilling the pump that provides his nutritional formula.
The routine has eased over the last year, primarily in frequency and volume of administrations. But it still required staying up past midnight, every night, refilling his formula and managing the pump. One of the common conditions of short gut patients is an aversion to eating. Like anyone who's broken a joint, it can require months of rehabilitation. We arranged for an eating therapist to visit weekly, helping us work with Nathan to overcome his fears and get comfortable with the act of chewing and swallowing. It's an acutely frustrating process, especially for someone like me who has no problem with eating (wink).
Slowly and surely, he's increased his daily intake of "normal" food. What started as a few Cheerios (literally) eaten by hand a year ago, has increased to 1450 calories this past Saturday. His diet is still but a shadow compared to that of the average six year-old, but it's expanding each week.
And then, just this morning, the doctor informed my wife this morning that Nathan no longer has to use the formula pump at all. None of us expected this. I cried when I heard the news. I'm fighting back tears as I type these words. I can see daylight after all.
I hope this doesn't read as overly melodramatic. Truth be told, I didn't sit down to write this story for anyone else. But it feels good to write it down. To let the pain and joy and frustration and relief just pour out into the keyboard. It feels damn good.
You'll have to excuse me now. I'm going to take my son out for a hot dog. It's gonna be a great day.
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