Tuning autovacuum parameters

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL databases and Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible require periodic maintenance known as vacuuming. Autovacuum is a built-in PostgreSQL utility that removes outdated or unnecessary data to free up space in the database. The autovacuum process runs the VACUUM command in the background at regular intervals.

Tuning autovacuum settings is a crucial step in maintaining the performance, stability, and availability of your Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL or Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible database system. By adjusting the autovacuum parameters to suit your workload and database size, you can optimize the performance of the autovacuum process and reduce its impact on system resources, thus improving the overall health of your database.

In addition to adjusting the autovacuum settings, it is important to monitor the performance of your database and its components by using the tools and metrics available in Amazon RDS and Aurora. By monitoring performance metrics such as bloat, freeable space, and query run times, you can identify potential issues before they become serious problems, and take appropriate actions to resolve them.

This section discusses the following autovacuum topics and parameters:

• VACUUM and ANALYZE commands

• Checking for bloat

• autovacuum

• autovacuum_work_mem

• autovacuum_naptime

• autovacuum_max_workers

• autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor

• autovacuum_vacuum_threshold

• autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor

• autovacuum_analyze_threshold

• autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit

For additional information about autovacuum, see the following links:

• Understanding autovacuum in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL environments (blog post)

• Working with the PostgreSQL autovacuum on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL (Amazon RDS documentation)

• Parallel vacuuming in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL (blog post)