This test continuously tracks how often the background writer performs checkpointing and how much I/O load it imposes on the server, so that you can proactively detect potential overload conditions, appropriately fine-tune the checkpointing activity performed by the background writer to minimize the I/O, and thus prevent the performance degradation that may otherwise occur on the server.

This page depicts the default parameters that need to be configured for the PgBgWritStatTest.

• The TEST PERIOD list box helps the user to decide how often this test needs to be executed. 

• In order to monitor a PostgreSQL server, a special database user account has to be created in every PostgreSQL database instance that requires monitoring i.e., you can manually create the special database user. When doing so, ensure that this user is vested with the superuser privileges. The sample script we recommend for user creation for eG monitoring is:

  CREATE ROLE eguser LOGIN
  ENCRYPTED PASSWORD {'eguser password'}
  SUPERUSER NOINHERIT NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE;

  The name of this user has to be specified in the USERNAME text box.

  Alternately you can alter the role of an existing user to be vested with the superuser privileges. The sample script we recommend for altering the user during eG monitoring is:

  ALTER Role eguser
  SUPERUSER;

• Specify the password associated with the above user name (can be ‘NULL’) in the PASSWORD text box. Here, ‘NULL’ means that the user does not have any password.

• Confirm the password by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box.

• Enter the name of the database to connect to in the DBNAME text box. The default is "postgres".

• If the PostgreSQL server being monitored is an SSL-enabled server, then set the SSL flag to Yes. If not, then set the SSL flag to No.

• Once the necessary values have been provided, clicking on the UPDATE button will register the changes made.

When changing default configurations of tests, the values with "$" indicate variables that will be replaced by the eG system according to the specific server being managed - for instance, $hostName is the host/nickname of the target host, $port is the port number of the server being monitored. E.g., for a server xyz:80, $hostName will be changed automatically by the eG manager to "xyz" and $port will be changed to "80" when configuring a test.