With VACUUM being so critical to performance, automating it as much as possible has been one of the most regularly improved aspects of the database during the last few years of development. Major advancements per version include the following:
- 3, 7.4, 8.0: autovacuum is available as a contrib module (contrib/pg_autovacuum). It requires custom scripting to keep it running all the time.
- 1: The autovacuum daemon is introduced as a distinct process managed by the server, always running whenever the server is enabled.
- 2: Last vacuum and last analyze times are saved to pg_stat_all_tables so that you can monitor activity better.
- 3: autovacuum is turned on by default, and it can run multiple workers at once. Additional log detail is possible ...
