We are using Azure postgres DB single server. I wanted to modify parameter - checkpoint_timeout to its desired value as per our DB load. However it does not show up in server parameter setting menu , nor in command line interface. Is it limitation of single server, that we cannot modify some parameters at all.? Thanks in advance.!

Hi @Sajith Shetty , thanks for your patience. As per the product group due to difference in underlying infrastructure we don’t offer checkpoint_timeout parameter as user configurable in single server. But at the same time we would like to understand if there is any use case where you want to set this parameter value. Like do you want to reduce number of checkpoints? Is the checkpoint causing significant fluctuation in the workload throughput? Increasing checkpoint duration may have adverse impact on application availability in case of failures/restarts.

configuration parameter does not exist - azure postgres single server

Accepted answer

Anurag Sharma 17,576 Reputation points

2021-09-13T05:19:34.777+00:00

Hi @Sajith Shetty , thanks for your patience. As per the product group due to difference in underlying infrastructure we don’t offer checkpoint_timeout parameter as user configurable in single server. But at the same time we would like to understand if there is any use case where you want to set this parameter value. Like do you want to reduce number of checkpoints? Is the checkpoint causing significant fluctuation in the workload throughput? Increasing checkpoint duration may have adverse impact on application availability in case of failures/restarts.
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Sajith Shetty 21 Reputation points

2021-09-13T05:25:19.89+00:00

Hi @AnuragSharma-MSFT , Thanks for your response.

We have high average data manipulation for one of our customers every 5 minutes. We need to set max_wal_size to around 20 GB
and checkpoint_timeout to at least 20 minutes. All these are in the testing phase.

As per the log analysis, a high volume of data is being processed continuously in 5 minutes now; there are very few seconds or mostly none left between every checkpoint and causing high I/O overhead during the checkpoint process.

We are aware of the fact that checkpoint_timeout implies recovery time, which is fine considering the performance impact.

Note that we are also planning to upgrade our single server to a FLEX server, however, there are compatibility issues to be resolved on the application side. Meanwhile, can you confirm if checkpoint_timeout can be controlled in the flex server?

Anurag Sharma 17,576 Reputation points

2021-09-13T05:44:00.637+00:00

Thanks for your reply. Yes we support checkpoint_timeout on Flexible Server. Please check the screenshot below.

Please let us know if this helps or else we can discuss further on the same.

Sajith Shetty 21 Reputation points

2021-09-13T06:07:43.007+00:00

Hi @AnuragSharma-MSFT , Thanks for answering the question on FLEX.
However, coming back to my initial question, so do you confirm there is no way to change this parameter in a single server? If not, why allowed in FLEX?

Anurag Sharma 17,576 Reputation points

2021-09-14T05:31:16.523+00:00

Hi @Sajith Shetty , thanks for your patience. I am quoting the PG response on this "Due to difference in underlying infrastructure we don’t offer checkpoint_timeout parameter as user configurable in single server."

This would purely be design consideration on single server. However if we go with Flexible Server we have the capacity to control this as well as other parameters as well.

Please let me know if this helps.
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configuration parameter does not exist - azure postgres single server

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