Date: 2025-05-15
Time: 09:00–09:50
Room: Breakout Room 3
Level: Intermediate
Out of all PostgreSQL configuration parameters that affects performance,
shared_buffers is arguably one of the most important. But in order to change
its value, the database needs to be restarted, meaning that adjusting
shared_buffers in response to a dynamically changing load becomes tricky. For
example you might have strict requirements on high availability that are not
allowing that, or you want to find the optimal value algorithmically and have
to change this configuration very frequently. As a result, users tend to settle
down on a non optimal value and pay the price in performance or money, getting
frustrated either way.
After pondering about this for a while and having discussed this on
pgsql-hackers, it seems we found out how to improve the situation, allow
changing shared_buffers at runtime without requiring a restart and modernize
the way PostgreSQL works with shared memory overall. In this talk we would like
to discuss the proposed solution [1], covering topics like:
[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/cnthxg2eekacrejyeonuhiaezc7vd7o2uowlsbenxqfkjwgvwj@qgzu6eoqrglb