I checked the memory records from last night and I do see the VPS hover in the 90% range, finally spiking to 98.9% when something probably finally choked.

Thanks for teaching me something new!

I tried searching around for tips on settings and stumbled on this.

https://dbadataverse.com/tech/postgresql/2025/02/postgresql-configuration-parameters-best-practices-for-performance-tuning

Following those general tips then for a 4Gb RAM VPS

Step 1: Reserved 25% for the OS: 3Gb

Step 2: Adjust Shared Buffer to 25% to 40% of RAM (After Reserve): About 1Gb

Step 3: Adjust Working Memory for Concurrent Users: I adjusted for 150 Concurrent Users and about half of 4Gb. So 15Mb

150*15 = 2,250

Result: VPS RAM usage went down from the 80% range to around the 50% range.

Thanks! VPS has 4GB ram.

I have these defaults for the postgres

services:

  db:
    shm_size: 2gb
    image: postgres:17
    restart: unless-stopped
    user: "1000:1000"
    env_file:
     - ./.env.docker
    command:
      - postgres
      # Memory
      - -c
      - shared_buffers=1GB
      - -c
      - effective_cache_size=3GB
      - -c
      - work_mem=32MB
      - -c
      - maintenance_work_mem=256MB

      # WAL / checkpoints
      - -c
      - checkpoint_completion_target=0.9
      - -c
      - wal_buffers=16MB
      - -c
      - max_wal_size=4GB
      - -c
      - min_wal_size=1GB

      # Query planner
      - -c
      - random_page_cost=1.1
      - -c
      - effective_io_concurrency=200

      # Connections
      - -c
      - max_connections=150
      - -c
      - jit=off
    volumes:
     - ./pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    networks:
      - pf_network