Performance and scaling for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL (original) (raw)

The following section discusses managing performance and scaling for an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster. It also includes information about other maintenance tasks.

Topics

• Scaling Aurora PostgreSQL DB instances
• Maximum connections to an Aurora PostgreSQL DB instance
• Temporary storage limits for Aurora PostgreSQL
• Huge pages for Aurora PostgreSQL
• Testing Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL by using fault injection queries
• Displaying volume status for an Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster
• Specifying the RAM disk for the stats_temp_directory
• Managing temporary files with PostgreSQL

Scaling Aurora PostgreSQL DB instances

You can scale Aurora PostgreSQL DB instances in two ways, instance scaling and read scaling. For more information about read scaling, see Read scaling.

You can scale your Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster by modifying the DB instance class for each DB instance in the DB cluster. Aurora PostgreSQL supports several DB instance classes optimized for Aurora. Don't use db.t2 or db.t3 instance classes for larger Aurora clusters of size greater than 40 terabytes (TB).

Note

We recommend using the T DB instance classes only for development and test servers, or other non-production servers. For more details on the T instance classes, see DB instance class types.

Scaling isn't instantaneous. It can take 15 minutes or more to complete the change to a different DB instance class. If you use this approach to modify the DB instance class, you apply the change during the next scheduled maintenance window (rather than immediately) to avoid affecting users.

As an alternative to modifying the DB instance class directly, you can minimize downtime by using the high availability features of Amazon Aurora. First, add an Aurora Replica to your cluster. When creating the replica, choose the DB instance class size that you want to use for your cluster. When the Aurora Replica is synchronized with the cluster, you then failover to the newly added Replica. To learn more, see Aurora Replicas and Fast failover with Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL.

For detailed specifications of the DB instance classes supported by Aurora PostgreSQL, seeSupported DB engines for DB instance classes.

Maximum connections to an Aurora PostgreSQL DB instance

An Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster allocates resources based on the DB instance class and its available memory. Each connection to the DB cluster consumes incremental amounts of these resources, such as memory and CPU. Memory consumed per connection varies based on query type, count, and whether temporary tables are used. Even an idle connection consumes memory and CPU. That's because when queries run on a connection, more memory is allocated for each query and it's not released completely, even when processing stops. Thus, we recommend that you make sure your applications aren't holding on to idle connections: each one of these wastes resources and affects performance negatively. For more information, see Resources consumed by idle PostgreSQL connections.

The maximum number of connections allowed by an Aurora PostgreSQL DB instance is determined by the max_connections parameter value specified in the parameter group for that DB instance. The ideal setting for themax_connections parameter is one that supports all the client connections your application needs, without an excess of unused connections, plus at least 3 more connections to support AWS automation. Before modifying themax_connections parameter setting, we recommend that you consider the following:

• If the max_connections value is too low, the Aurora PostgreSQL DB instance might not have sufficient connections available when clients attempt to connect. If this happens, attempts to connect using psql raise error messages such as the following:

psql: FATAL: remaining connection slots are reserved for non-replication superuser connections  

• If the max_connections value exceeds the number of connections that are actually needed, the unused connections can cause performance to degrade.

The default value of max_connections is derived from the following Aurora PostgreSQL LEAST function:

LEAST({DBInstanceClassMemory/9531392},5000).

If you want to change the value for max_connections, you need to create a custom DB cluster parameter group and change its value there. After applying your custom DB parameter group to your cluster, be sure to reboot the primary instance so the new value takes effect. For more information, see Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL parameters and Creating a DB cluster parameter group in Amazon Aurora.

Tip

If your applications frequently open and close connections, or keep a large number of long-lived connections open, we recommend that you use Amazon RDS Proxy. RDS Proxy is a fully managed, highly available database proxy that uses connection pooling to share database connections securely and efficiently. To learn more about RDS Proxy, seeAmazon RDS Proxy for Aurora.

For details about how Aurora Serverless v2 instances handle this parameter, see Maximum connections for Aurora Serverless v2.

Temporary storage limits for Aurora PostgreSQL

Aurora PostgreSQL stores tables and indexes in the Aurora storage subsystem. Aurora PostgreSQL uses separate temporary storage for non-persistent temporary files. This includes files that are used for such purposes as sorting large data sets during query processing or for index build operations. For more information, see the article How can I troubleshoot local storage issues in Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible instances?.

These local storage volumes are backed by Amazon Elastic Block Store and can be extended by using a larger DB instance class. For more information about storage, see Amazon Aurora storage. You can also increase your local storage for temporary objects by using an NVMe enabled instance type and Aurora Optimized Reads-enabled temporary objects. For more information, see Improving query performance for Aurora PostgreSQL with Aurora Optimized Reads.

Note

You might see storage-optimization events when scaling DB instances, for example, from db.r5.2xlarge to db.r5.4xlarge.

The following table shows the maximum amount of temporary storage available for each Aurora PostgreSQL DB instance class. For more information on DB instance class support for Aurora, see Amazon Aurora DB instance classes.

You can monitor the temporary storage available for a DB instance with theFreeLocalStorage CloudWatch metric, --> described in Amazon CloudWatch metrics for Amazon Aurora. (This doesn't apply to Aurora Serverless v2.)

For some workloads, you can reduce the amount of temporary storage by allocating more memory to the processes that are performing the operation. To increase the memory available to an operation, increasing the values of the work_mem or maintenance_work_mem PostgreSQL parameters.

Huge pages for Aurora PostgreSQL

Huge pages are a memory management feature that reduces overhead when a DB instance is working with large contiguous chunks of memory, such as that used by shared buffers. This PostgreSQL feature is supported by all currently available Aurora PostgreSQL versions.

Huge_pages parameter is turned on by default for all DB instance classes other than t3.medium,db.t3.large,db.t4g.medium,db.t4g.large instance classes. You can't change the huge_pages parameter value or turn off this feature in the supported instance classes of Aurora PostgreSQL.

On Aurora PostgreSQL DB instances that don't support the huge pages memory feature, specific process memory usage might increase without corresponding workload changes.

The system allocates shared memory segments like the buffer cache during server startup. When huge memory pages aren't available, the system doesn't charge these allocations to the postmaster process. Instead, it includes the memory in the process that first accessed each 4KB page in the shared memory segment.

Note

Active connections share allocated memory as needed, regardless of how shared memory usage is tracked across processes.