INSERT/UPDATE database via background job while minimizing read impact

Question

I'm running a large number of background tasks on a PostgreSQL server, using Sidekiq to update records from an external source. But whenever I start writing from the background process, my SELECTs suffer and the web app becomes slow.

What's the best strategy to avoid blocking reads?

Answer 1

You could use the terminal command "renice"

renice -p 1337 -n 5

This changes the priority of process with id 1337 to have a new priority of 5. The process scale works from -20 to 20 where -20 is the highest priority and 20 is the lowest priority.

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man1/renice.1posix.html