Monitoring Disk Usage

PostgreSQL 7.3.4 Documentation
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# Chapter 11. Monitoring Disk Usage

This chapter discusses how to monitor the disk usage of a PostgreSQL database system. In the current release, the database administrator does not have much control over the on-disk storage layout, so this chapter is mostly informative and can give you some ideas how to manage the disk usage with operating system tools.

# 11.1. Determining Disk Usage

Each table has a primary heap disk file where most of the data is stored. To store long column values, there is also a TOAST file associated with the table, named based on the table's OID (actually pg_class.relfilenode), and an index on the TOAST table. There also may be indexes associated with the base table.

You can monitor disk space from three places: from psql using `VACUUM` information, from psql using `contrib/dbsize`, and from the command line using contrib/oid2name. Using psql on a recently vacuumed (or analyzed) database, you can issue queries to see the disk usage of any table:

    play=# SELECT relfilenode, relpages
    play-# FROM pg_class
    play-# WHERE relname = 'customer';
     relfilenode | relpages
    -------------+----------
           16806 |       60
    (1 row)

Each page is typically 8 kilobytes. (Remember, relpages is only updated by `VACUUM` and `ANALYZE`.) To show the space used by TOAST tables, use a query based on the heap relfilenode shown above:

    play=# SELECT relname, relpages
    play-# FROM pg_class
    play-# WHERE relname = 'pg_toast_16806' OR
    play-#       relname = 'pg_toast_16806_index'
    play-# ORDER BY relname;
           relname        | relpages
    ----------------------+----------
     pg_toast_16806       |        0
     pg_toast_16806_index |        1

You can easily display index usage too:

    play=# SELECT c2.relname, c2.relpages
    play-# FROM pg_class c, pg_class c2, pg_index i
    play-# WHERE c.relname = 'customer' AND
    play-#       c.oid = i.indrelid AND
    play-#       c2.oid = i.indexrelid
    play-# ORDER BY c2.relname;
           relname        | relpages
    ----------------------+----------
     customer_id_indexdex |       26

It is easy to find your largest files using psql:

    play=# SELECT relname, relpages
    play-# FROM pg_class
    play-# ORDER BY relpages DESC;
           relname        | relpages
    ----------------------+----------
     bigtable             |     3290
     customer             |     3144

`contrib/dbsize` loads functions into your database that allow you to find the size of a table or database from inside psql without the need for `VACUUM/ANALYZE.`

You can also use `contrib/oid2name` to show disk usage. See `README.oid2name` for examples. It includes a script that shows disk usage for each database.

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