For an example of this in action, consider a system with 32 GB of RAM, eight CPU cores, and eight disk spindles. We used 8 MB for our work_mem setting, so this means we may need up to 40 MB per database connection. 16 GB of RAM can then safely support about 409 connections, assuming memory is our only resource limit.
Otherwise, our eight CPUs and eight disks can support up to 24 connections. This is quite a discrepancy! However, 24 is the safer of the two limits to prevent latency. If we find that a certain amount of latency is not overly disruptive, we can increase the connection count, but not higher than 400, otherwise we risk actually exhausting the available RAM.
Please keep in mind that the focus of this book is high ...
