Service operations - Configure database parameters

Timescale Cloud allows you to customize many TimescaleDB and PostgreSQL configuration options for each Service individually. Most configuration values for a service are initially set in accordance with best practices given the compute and storage settings of the service. Any time you increase or decrease the compute for a Service, the most essential values are set to reflect the size of the new service.

There are times, however, when your specific workload could require tuning some of the many available TimescaleDB and PostgreSQL parameters. By providing the ability to tune various runtime settings, Timescale Cloud provides the balance and flexibility you need when running your workloads in our hosted environment.

warning

You can modify most parameters without restarting the Timescale Cloud Service. However, some changes do require a restart, resulting in some brief downtime (usually about 30 seconds). An example of a change that needs a restart is modifying the compute resources of a running service.

View service operation details

To modify configuration parameters, first select the Service that you want to modify. This displays the service details, with these tabs across the top: Overview, Explorer, Operations, Metrics, and Logs. Select Operations, then Database parameters.

Modify basic parameters

Under the Common parameters tab, you can modify a limited set of the parameters that are most often modified in a TimescaleDB or PostgreSQL instance. To modify a configured value, hover over the value and click the revealed pencil icon. This reveals an editable field to apply your change. Clicking anywhere outside of that field saves the value to be applied.

note

The values for some of the parameters vary depending on the plan. For example, the value for max_connections is exactly 25 in the smallest compute tier, but ranges from 25 to 500 in higher compute tiers.

Apply configuration changes

When you have modified the configuration parameters that you would like to change, click Apply changes. For some changes, such as timescaledb.max_background_workers, the service needs to be restarted. In this case, the button reads Apply changes and restart.

A confirmation dialog is displayed which indicates whether a restart is required. Click Confirm to apply the changes, and restart if necessary.