Hi, I went ahead and did that test. Here is the postgresql config I used for reference (note the wal options (recycle, init_zero) as well as full_page_writes = off, because ZeroFS cannot have torn writes by design). https://gist.github.com/Barre/8d68f0d00446389998a31f4e60f3276d Test was running on Azure with Standard D16ads v5 (16 vcpus, 64 GiB memory) This time, I didn't run ZFS with L2ARC, I just mounted ZeroFS with 9p. synchronous_commit = off postgres@zerofs:~$ pgbench -vvv -c 100 -j 40 -t 1000 bench pgbench (16.9 (Ubuntu 16.9-0ubuntu0.24.04.1)) starting vacuum...end. starting vacuum pgbench_accounts...end. transaction type: <builtin: TPC-B (sort of)> scaling factor: 50 query mode: simple number of clients: 100 number of threads: 40 maximum number of tries: 1 number of transactions per client: 1000 number of transactions actually processed: 100000/100000 number of failed transactions: 0 (0.000%) latency average = 6.239 ms initial connection time = 68.922 ms tps = 16026.940646 (without initial connection time) synchronous_commit = on postgres@zerofs:~$ pgbench -vvv -c 50 -j 15 -t 1000 bench pgbench (16.9 (Ubuntu 16.9-0ubuntu0.24.04.1)) starting vacuum...end. starting vacuum pgbench_accounts...end. transaction type: <builtin: TPC-B (sort of)> scaling factor: 50 query mode: simple number of clients: 50 number of threads: 15 maximum number of tries: 1 number of transactions per client: 1000 number of transactions actually processed: 50000/50000 number of failed transactions: 0 (0.000%) latency average = 197.723 ms initial connection time = 46.089 ms tps = 252.878721 (without initial connection time) Not great barebones with with synchronous_commit, but still usable! Best, Pierre On Fri, Jul 25, 2025, at 00:44, Pierre Barre wrote: >> This then begs the obvious question of how fast is this with >> synchronous_commit = on? > > Probably not awful, especially with commit_delay. > > I'll try that and report back. > > Best, > Pierre > > On Fri, Jul 25, 2025, at 00:03, Jeff Ross wrote: >> On 7/24/25 13:50, Pierre Barre wrote: >> >>> It’s not “safe” or “unsafe”, there’s mountains of valid workloads which don’t require synchronous_commit. Synchronous_commit don’t make your system automatically safe either, and if that’s a requirement, there’s many workarounds, as you suggested, it certainly doesn’t make the setup useless. >>> >>> Best, >>> Pierre >>> >>> On Thu, Jul 24, 2025, at 21:44, Nico Williams wrote: >>>> On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 12:57:39PM +0200, Pierre Barre wrote: >>>>> - Postgres configured accordingly memory-wise as well as with >>>>> synchronous_commit = off, wal_init_zero = off and wal_recycle = off. >>>> Bingo. That's why it's fast (synchronous_commit = off). It's also why >>>> it's not safe _unless_ you have a local, fast, persistent ZIL device >>>> (which I assume you don't). >>>> >>>> Nico >>>> -- >> This then begs the obvious question of how fast is this with >> synchronous_commit = on?
