Dev Tools · 1h ago
Why 1,000 database connections only do 13 connections' worth of work
A distributed web crawler opened 1,000 Postgres connections but only 13 were active at any time, with the rest idle. Each idle connection still consumes CPU and memory, causing 95% CPU usage from overhead rather than actual work. The article explains that max_connections is a memory-based safety limit, not a target for useful concurrency.
Meridian48 take
A useful reminder that connection pooling and concurrency limits are often misunderstood, but the piece is more of a blog post than a novel insight for experienced engineers.
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Alternative to load test: Model using the Universal Scalability Law →
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database-performanceconnection-pooling