Josh Berkus: Introducing Flexible Freeze

One of the things I mentioned in my series on VACUUM FREEZE was that we really needed a Postgres utility which would opportunistically freeze tables during low traffic periods. Today I'm announcing the Flexible Freeze project, our first attempt at designing such a utility.

All that's there right now is a simple Python script.  However, that script is already a useful tool, installed at multiple production sites. Here's how the script works:

1. identify your active databases and daily/weekly low traffic periods.
2. create a cron job which calls flexible_freeze.py with a time limit to keep it inside your low traffic window.
3. flexible_freeze.py will loop through your tables with the oldest XIDs, freezing them until it runs out of time or out of tables

There is also a second mode, using the --vacuum switch, which does VACUUM ANALYZE on the tables with the most dead rows (according to pg_stat_user_tables).  This is to help users who have a strong high/low traffic cycle and want to make sure that regular vacuuming takes place during low traffic.  If you're running both modes, we advise doing the freeze first.

Of course, I have a tanker-truck full of desired improvements/expansions to this.  So, pull requests welcome. 

If you're more into Ruby, Wanelo has rewritten flexible freeze for Rails and incorporated it into their Postmodern tool.