Dedicated server guidelines

Initial server tuning can be turned into a fairly mechanical process:

1. Adjust the logging default to be more verbose.
2. Determine how large to set shared_buffers to. Start at 25 percent of system memory. Considering adjusting upward if you're on a recent PostgreSQL version with spread checkpoints and know your workload benefits from giving memory directory to the buffer cache. If you're on a platform where this parameter is not so useful, limit its value or adjust downward accordingly.
3. Estimate your maximum connections generously, as this is a hard limit; clients will be refused connection once it's reached.
4. Start the server with these initial parameters. Note how much memory is still available for the OS filesystem cache.
5. Adjust effective_cache_size based on shared_buffers plus the OS cache.
6. Divide the OS cache size by max_connections, then by two. This gives you an idea of a maximum reasonable setting for work_mem. If your application is not...