Document random page cost is only 4x seqeuntial, and not 40x.

This commit is contained in:
Bruce Momjian 2012-02-14 16:54:54 -05:00
parent ef7a7c81d9
commit c1d9df4fa2

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@ -2604,6 +2604,26 @@ SET ENABLE_SEQSCAN TO OFF;
parameters.
</para>
<para>
Random access to mechanical disk storage is normally much more expensive
than four-times sequential access. However, a lower default is used
(4.0) because the majority of random accesses to disk, such as indexed
reads, are assumed to be in cache. The default value can be thought of
as modeling random access as 40 times slower than sequential, while
expecting 90% of random reads to be cached.
</para>
<para>
If you believe a 90% cache rate is an incorrect assumption
for your workload, you can increase random_page_cost to better
reflect the true cost of random storage reads. Correspondingly,
if your data is likely to be completely in cache, such as when
the database is smaller than the total server memory, decreasing
random_page_cost can be appropriate. Storage that has a low random
read cost relative to sequential, e.g. solid-state drives, might
also be better modeled with a lower value for random_page_cost.
</para>
<tip>
<para>
Although the system will let you set <varname>random_page_cost</> to