CPU usage throttling v16
EDB Resource Manager uses CPU throttling to keep the aggregate CPU usage of all processes in the group within the limit specified by the cpu_rate_limit
parameter. A process in the group might be interrupted and put into sleep mode for a short time to maintain the defined limit. When and how such interruptions occur is defined by a proprietary algorithm used by EDB Resource Manager.
To control CPU use of a resource group, set the cpu_rate_limit
resource type parameter.
Set the
cpu_rate_limit
parameter to the fraction of CPU time over wall-clock time to which the combined, simultaneous CPU usage of all processes in the group must not exceed. The value assigned tocpu_rate_limit
is typically less than or equal to 1.On multicore systems, you can apply the
cpu_rate_limit
to more than one CPU core by setting it to greater than 1. For example, ifcpu_rate_limit
is set to 2.0, you use 100% of two CPUs. The valid range of thecpu_rate_limit
parameter is 0 to 1.67772e+07. A setting of 0 means no CPU rate limit was set for the resource group.When the value is multiplied by 100, you can also interpret the
cpu_rate_limit
as the CPU usage percentage for a resource group.
Setting the CPU rate limit for a resource group
Use the ALTER RESOURCE GROUP
command with the SET cpu_rate_limit
clause to set the CPU rate limit for a resource group.
In this example, the CPU usage limit is set to 50% for resgrp_a
, 40% for resgrp_b
, and 30% for resgrp_c
. This means that the combined CPU usage of all processes assigned to resgrp_a
is maintained at approximately 50%. Similarly, for all processes in resgrp_b
, the combined CPU usage is kept to approximately 40%, and so on.
This query shows the settings of cpu_rate_limit
in the catalog:
Changing the cpu_rate_limit
of a resource group affects new processes that are assigned to the group. It also immediately affects any currently running processes that are members of the group. That is, if the cpu_rate_limit
is changed from .5 to .3, currently running processes in the group are throttled downward so that the aggregate group CPU usage is near 30% instead of 50%.
To show the effect of setting the CPU rate limit for resource groups, the following psql
command-line examples use a CPU-intensive calculation of 20000 factorial (multiplication of 20000 * 19999 * 19998, and so on) performed by the query SELECT 20000!
.
The resource groups with the CPU rate limit settings shown in the previous query are used in these examples.
Example: Single process in a single group
This example shows that the current process is set to use resource group resgrp_b
. The factorial calculation then starts.
In a second session, the Linux top
command is used to display the CPU usage under the %CPU
column. Because the top
command output periodically changes, it represents a snapshot at an arbitrary point in time:
The row where edb-postgres
appears under the COMMAND
column shows the psql
session performing the factorial calculation. The CPU usage of the session shown under the %CPU
column is 39.9, which is close to the 40% CPU limit set for resource group resgrp_b
.
By contrast, if the psql
session is removed from the resource group and the factorial calculation is performed again, the CPU usage is much higher.
Under the %CPU
column for edb-postgres
, the CPU usage is now 93.6, which is significantly higher than the 39.9 when the process was part of the resource group:
Example: Multiple processes in a single group
As stated previously, the CPU rate limit applies to the aggregate of all processes in the resource group. This concept is shown in the following example.
The factorial calculation is performed simultaneously in two separate psql
sessions, each of which was added to resource group resgrp_b
that has cpu_rate_limit
set to .4 (CPU usage of 40%).
Session 1
Session 2
A third session monitors the CPU usage:
Two new processes named edb-postgres
have %CPU
values of 19.9 and 19.6. The sum is close to the 40% CPU usage set for resource group resgrp_b
.
This command sequence displays the sum of all edb-postgres
processes sampled over half-second time intervals. This example shows how the total CPU usage of the processes in the resource group changes over time as EDB Resource Manager throttles the processes to keep the total resource group CPU usage near 40%.
Example: Multiple processes in multiple groups
In this example, two additional psql
sessions are used along with the previous two sessions. The third and fourth sessions perform the same factorial calculation in resource group resgrp_c
with a cpu_rate_limit
of .3
(30% CPU usage).
Session 3
Session 4
The top
command displays the following output:
The two resource groups in use have CPU usage limits of 40% and 30%. The sum of the %CPU
column for the first two edb-postgres
processes is 39.5 (approximately 40%, which is the limit for resgrp_b
). The sum of the %CPU
column for the third and fourth edb-postgres
processes is 31.6 (approximately 30%, which is the limit for resgrp_c
).
The sum of the CPU usage limits of the two resource groups to which these processes belong is 70%. The following output shows that the sum of the four processes borders around 70%:
By contrast, if three sessions are processing. where two sessions remain in resgrp_b
but the third session doesn't belong to any resource group, the top
command shows the following output:
The second and third edb-postgres
processes belonging to the resource group where the CPU usage is limited to 40% have a total CPU usage of 37.8. However, the first edb-postgres
process has a 58.6% CPU usage, as it isn't within a resource group. It basically uses the remaining available CPU resources on the system.
Likewise, the following output shows the sum of all three sessions is around 95%, since one of the sessions has no set limit on its CPU usage: