Controlling automatic database maintenance

autovacuum is enabled by default in PostgreSQL and mostly does a great job of maintaining your PostgreSQL database. We say mostly because it doesn't know everything you do about the database, such as the best time to perform maintenance actions. Let's explore the settings that can be tuned so that you can use vacuums efficiently.

Getting ready

Exercising control requires some thinking about what you want:

• What are the best times of day to do things? When are system resources more available?
• Which days are quiet, and which are not?
• Which tables are critical to the application, and which are not?

How to do it…

Perform the following steps:

1. The first thing you must do is make sure that autovacuum is switched on, which is the default. Check that you have the following parameters enabled in your postgresql.conf file:

   autovacuum = on 
   track_counts = on 

2. PostgreSQL...