Sample setup

The server used here is the same one described in the pgbench chapter. For these examples, initially a small pgbench database was created with a scale of 100 (one that easily fits into RAM), and the standard mixed test was run:

$ pgbench -i -s 100 pgbench
$ pgbench -j 4 -c 8 -T 300 pgbench

This gave approximately 2000 transactions/second. Larger tests with lower TPS values will appear below as well.

Note

If you're using a PostgreSQL earlier than 9.0, you'll have to leave out the -j 4 part of the preceding code to try this yourself, and with the pgbench examples shown later. Versions before 8.4 won't handle -T 300 either, and you'll have to find a number of substitute transactions to pass using -t in order to make the test last for a while.

The sample server has the following as its disk layout for the database directories:

• pg_xlog: /dev/sdf1
• data: /dev/md0. Linux software RAID 0; individual drives are sdc1, sdd1, sde1

You'll need this disk...