maintenance_work_mem v17

Parameter type: Integer

Default value: 16MB

Range: 1024kB to 2097151kB

Minimum scope of effect: Per session

When value changes take effect: Immediate

Required authorization to activate: Session user

Specifies the maximum amount of memory used by maintenance operations such as VACUUM, CREATE INDEX, and ALTER TABLE ADD FOREIGN KEY. It defaults to 16MB. Since a database session can execute only one of these operations at a time, and an installation normally doesn't have many of them running concurrently, it's safe to set this value significantly larger than work_mem. Larger settings might improve performance for vacuuming and for restoring database dumps.

When autovacuum runs, you can allocate up to autovacuum_max_workers times, so be careful not to set the default value too high.

A good rule of thumb is to set this to about 5% of system memory but not more than about 512MB. Larger values don't necessarily improve performance.