Monitoring tools
Monitor and diagnose PostgreSQL issues
Effective PostgreSQL monitoring goes beyond basic CPU and disk metrics. The most critical indicators live inside PostgreSQL itself: lock wait times, replication lag, cache hit ratios, autovacuum queue depth, connection pool saturation, and per-query performance trends from pg_stat_statements.
PostgreSQL provides rich system views for monitoring: pg_stat_activity shows current sessions and their states, pg_locks reveals lock contention, pg_stat_user_tables tracks sequential scan ratios and dead tuple accumulation, and pg_stat_statements aggregates query performance metrics. Understanding these views and their interactions is essential for diagnosing production issues before they escalate.
These tools help you analyze lock trees, identify blocking queries, and diagnose connection issues. The AI assistant can interpret pg_stat_activity output, explain lock wait chains, and suggest targeted fixes — whether the problem is a missing index, a long-running transaction holding locks, or autovacuum competing with production queries.
Common problems
- Long-running transactions blocking autovacuum and causing bloat
- Lock wait chains where one blocked query cascades to block dozens more
- pg_stat_statements not enabled, making query performance analysis impossible
- Connection pool exhaustion during traffic spikes
- Replication lag growing unnoticed until failover reveals data loss