Ecto pool queueing but idle_time nonzero

Questions / Help
1

Hi,

A few months ago @josevalim added idle_time to Ecto after I made this issue, which is great, but now I’m seeing queue times on the DB pool, with non-zero idle time.
If there is queueing time, or time spent waiting for a connection to feel up, I would expect the idle time for connections to be zero or very close to zero.

However I’m seeing regular spikes in queue time on a certain repo (ms on the y axis, different lines are different hosts):

queue
queue753×175 21.6 KB

but the minimum idle time never comes close to zero (the lower band is minimum value, also in ms):

image
image771×209 61.5 KB

From the first graph, I’d assume I have to increase the DB pool size because of queueing. From the second graph, the pool size seems fine.

Am I misunderstanding something about how this should work or how the pool algorithm works?

2

You should probably look at how other resources are being used in the system. For example, what about the VM run queue? What about CPU usage? For example, if the system is overloaded, most measured times are going to go up, including idle_time, since the pool itself does not have enough time to even checkout the connection. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
3

I am collecting run_queue with Ferd’s vmstats, and it looks to be around 5 to 20. CPU usage never gets above 30%, and there is plenty of memory.