Useful Diagnostic Queries

Finding which shard contains data for a specific tenant

The rows of a distributed table are grouped into shards, and each shard is placed on a worker node in the Citus cluster. In the multi-tenant Citus use case we can determine which worker node contains the rows for a specific tenant by putting together two pieces of information: the shard id associated with the tenant id, and the shard placements on workers. The two can be retrieved together in a single query. Suppose our multi-tenant application’s tenants and are stores, and we want to find which worker node holds the data for Gap.com (id=4, suppose).

To find the worker node holding the data for store id=4, ask for the placement of rows whose distribution column has value 4:

SELECT shardid, shardstate, shardlength, nodename, nodeport, placementid
  FROM pg_dist_placement AS placement,
       pg_dist_node AS node
 WHERE placement.groupid = node.groupid
   AND node.noderole = 'primary'
   AND shardid = (
     SELECT get_shard_id_for_distribution_column('stores', 4)
   );

The output contains the host and port of the worker database.

┌─────────┬────────────┬─────────────┬───────────┬──────────┬─────────────┐
│ shardid │ shardstate │ shardlength │ nodename  │ nodeport │ placementid │
├─────────┼────────────┼─────────────┼───────────┼──────────┼─────────────┤
│  102009 │          1 │           0 │ localhost │     5433 │           2 │
└─────────┴────────────┴─────────────┴───────────┴──────────┴─────────────┘

Finding the distribution column for a table

Each distributed table in Citus has a “distribution column.” For more information about what this is and how it works, see Distributed Data Modeling. There are many situations where it is important to know which column it is. Some operations require joining or filtering on the distribution column, and you may encounter error messages with hints like, “add a filter to the distribution column.”

The pg_dist_* tables on the coordinator node contain diverse metadata about the distributed database. In particular pg_dist_partition holds information about the distribution column (formerly called partition column) for each table. You can use a convenient utility function to look up the distribution column name from the low-level details in the metadata. Here’s an example and its output:

-- create example table

CREATE TABLE products (
  store_id bigint,
  product_id bigint,
  name text,
  price money,

  CONSTRAINT products_pkey PRIMARY KEY (store_id, product_id)
);

-- pick store_id as distribution column

SELECT create_distributed_table('products', 'store_id');

-- get distribution column name for products table

SELECT column_to_column_name(logicalrelid, partkey) AS dist_col_name
  FROM pg_dist_partition
 WHERE logicalrelid='products'::regclass;

Example output:

┌───────────────┐
│ dist_col_name │
├───────────────┤
│ store_id      │
└───────────────┘

Detecting locks

This query will run across all worker nodes and identify locks, how long they’ve been open, and the offending queries:

SELECT run_command_on_workers($cmd$
  SELECT array_agg(
    blocked_statement || ' $ ' || cur_stmt_blocking_proc
    || ' $ ' || cnt::text || ' $ ' || age
  )
  FROM (
    SELECT blocked_activity.query    AS blocked_statement,
           blocking_activity.query   AS cur_stmt_blocking_proc,
           count(*)                  AS cnt,
           age(now(), min(blocked_activity.query_start)) AS "age"
    FROM pg_catalog.pg_locks         blocked_locks
    JOIN pg_catalog.pg_stat_activity blocked_activity
      ON blocked_activity.pid = blocked_locks.pid
    JOIN pg_catalog.pg_locks         blocking_locks
      ON blocking_locks.locktype = blocked_locks.locktype
     AND blocking_locks.DATABASE IS NOT DISTINCT FROM blocked_locks.DATABASE
     AND blocking_locks.relation IS NOT DISTINCT FROM blocked_locks.relation
     AND blocking_locks.page IS NOT DISTINCT FROM blocked_locks.page
     AND blocking_locks.tuple IS NOT DISTINCT FROM blocked_locks.tuple
     AND blocking_locks.virtualxid IS NOT DISTINCT FROM blocked_locks.virtualxid
     AND blocking_locks.transactionid IS NOT DISTINCT FROM blocked_locks.transactionid
     AND blocking_locks.classid IS NOT DISTINCT FROM blocked_locks.classid
     AND blocking_locks.objid IS NOT DISTINCT FROM blocked_locks.objid
     AND blocking_locks.objsubid IS NOT DISTINCT FROM blocked_locks.objsubid
     AND blocking_locks.pid != blocked_locks.pid
    JOIN pg_catalog.pg_stat_activity blocking_activity ON blocking_activity.pid = blocking_locks.pid
    WHERE NOT blocked_locks.GRANTED
     AND blocking_locks.GRANTED
    GROUP BY blocked_activity.query,
             blocking_activity.query
    ORDER BY 4
  ) a
$cmd$);

Example output:

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                               run_command_on_workers                              │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ (localhost,5433,t,"")                                                             │
│ (localhost,5434,t,"{""update ads_102277 set name = 'new name' where id = 1; $ sel…│
│…ect * from ads_102277 where id = 1 for update; $ 1 $ 00:00:03.729519""}")         │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Querying the size of your shards

This query will provide you with the size of every shard of a given distributed table, designated here with the placeholder my_distributed_table:

SELECT *
FROM run_command_on_shards('my_distributed_table', $cmd$
  SELECT json_build_object(
    'shard_name', '%1$s',
    'size',       pg_size_pretty(pg_table_size('%1$s'))
  );
$cmd$);

Example output:

┌─────────┬─────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ shardid │ success │                                result                                 │
├─────────┼─────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  102008 │ t       │ {"shard_name" : "my_distributed_table_102008", "size" : "2416 kB"}    │
│  102009 │ t       │ {"shard_name" : "my_distributed_table_102009", "size" : "3960 kB"}    │
│  102010 │ t       │ {"shard_name" : "my_distributed_table_102010", "size" : "1624 kB"}    │
│  102011 │ t       │ {"shard_name" : "my_distributed_table_102011", "size" : "4792 kB"}    │
└─────────┴─────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Querying the size of all distributed tables

This query gets a list of the sizes for each distributed table plus the size of their indices.

SELECT
  tablename,
  pg_size_pretty(
    citus_total_relation_size(tablename::text)
  ) AS total_size
FROM pg_tables pt
JOIN pg_dist_partition pp
  ON pt.tablename = pp.logicalrelid::text
WHERE schemaname = 'public';

Example output:

┌───────────────┬────────────┐
│   tablename   │ total_size │
├───────────────┼────────────┤
│ github_users  │ 39 MB      │
│ github_events │ 98 MB      │
└───────────────┴────────────┘

Note that this query works only when citus.shard_replication_factor = 1. Also there are other Citus functions for querying distributed table size, see Determining Table and Relation Size.

Determining Replication Factor per Table

When using Citus replication rather than PostgreSQL streaming replication, each table can have a customized “replication factor.” This controls the number of redundant copies Citus keeps of each of the table’s shards. (See Worker Node Failures.)

To see an overview of this setting for all tables, run:

SELECT logicalrelid AS tablename,
       count(*)/count(DISTINCT ps.shardid) AS replication_factor
FROM pg_dist_shard_placement ps
JOIN pg_dist_shard p ON ps.shardid=p.shardid
GROUP BY logicalrelid;

Example output:

┌───────────────┬────────────────────┐
│   tablename   │ replication_factor │
├───────────────┼────────────────────┤
│ github_events │                  1 │
│ github_users  │                  1 │
└───────────────┴────────────────────┘

Identifying unused indices

This query will run across all worker nodes and identify any unused indexes for a given distributed table, designated here with the placeholder my_distributed_table:

SELECT *
FROM run_command_on_shards('my_distributed_table', $cmd$
  SELECT array_agg(a) as infos
  FROM (
    SELECT (
      schemaname || '.' || relname || '##' || indexrelname || '##'
                 || pg_size_pretty(pg_relation_size(i.indexrelid))::text
                 || '##' || idx_scan::text
    ) AS a
    FROM  pg_stat_user_indexes ui
    JOIN  pg_index i
    ON    ui.indexrelid = i.indexrelid
    WHERE NOT indisunique
    AND   idx_scan < 50
    AND   pg_relation_size(relid) > 5 * 8192
    AND   (schemaname || '.' || relname)::regclass = '%s'::regclass
    ORDER BY
      pg_relation_size(i.indexrelid) / NULLIF(idx_scan, 0) DESC nulls first,
      pg_relation_size(i.indexrelid) DESC
  ) sub
$cmd$);

Example output:

┌─────────┬─────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ shardid │ success │                            result                                     │
├─────────┼─────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  102008 │ t       │                                                                       │
│  102009 │ t       │ {"public.my_distributed_table_102009##stupid_index_102009##28 MB##0"} │
│  102010 │ t       │                                                                       │
│  102011 │ t       │                                                                       │
└─────────┴─────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Monitoring client connection count

This query will give you the connection count by each type that are open on the coordinator:

SELECT state, count(*)
FROM pg_stat_activity
GROUP BY state;

Exxample output:

┌────────┬───────┐
│ state  │ count │
├────────┼───────┤
│ active │     3 │
│ ∅      │     1 │
└────────┴───────┘

Index hit rate

This query will provide you with your index hit rate across all nodes. Index hit rate is useful in determining how often indices are used when querying:

SELECT nodename, result as index_hit_rate
FROM run_command_on_workers($cmd$
  SELECT CASE sum(idx_blks_hit)
    WHEN 0 THEN 'NaN'::numeric
    ELSE to_char((sum(idx_blks_hit) - sum(idx_blks_read)) / sum(idx_blks_hit + idx_blks_read), '99.99')::numeric
    END AS ratio
  FROM pg_statio_user_indexes
$cmd$);

Example output:

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────┐
│                     nodename                      │ index_hit_rate │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────┤
│ ec2-13-59-96-221.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com  │ 0.88           │
│ ec2-52-14-226-167.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com │ 0.89           │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────┘