segment_*

The segment_* tables contain memory allocation statistics for the Greenplum Database segment instances. This tracks the amount of memory consumed by all postgres processes of a particular segment instance, and the remaining amount of memory available to a segment as per the settings configured by the currently active resource management scheme (resource group-based or resource queue-based). See the Greenplum Database Administrator Guide for more information about resource management schemes.

There are three segment tables, all having the same columns:

• segment_now is an external table whose data files are stored in $MASTER_DATA_DIRECTORY/gpperfmon/data. Current memory allocation data is stored in segment_now during the period between data collection from the gpperfmon agents and automatic commitment to the segment_history table.
• segment_tail is an external table whose data files are stored in $MASTER_DATA_DIRECTORY/gpperfmon/data. This is a transitional table for memory allocation data that has been cleared from segment_now but has not yet been committed to segment_history. It typically only contains a few minutes worth of data.
• segment_history is a regular table that stores historical memory allocation metrics. It is pre-partitioned into monthly partitions. Partitions are automatically added in two month increments as needed.

A particular segment instance is identified by its hostname and dbid (the unique segment identifier as per the gp_segment_configuration system catalog table).

Column	Type	Description
ctime	timestamp(0) (without time zone)	The time the row was created.
dbid	int	The segment ID (dbid from gp_segment_configuration).
hostname	charvar(64)	The segment hostname.
dynamic_memory_used	bigint	The amount of dynamic memory (in bytes) allocated to query processes running on this segment.
dynamic_memory_available	bigint	The amount of additional dynamic memory (in bytes) that the segment can request before reaching the limit set by the currently active resource management scheme (resource group-based or resource queue-based).

See also the views memory_info and dynamic_memory_info for aggregated memory allocation and utilization by host.

Parent topic: The gpperfmon Database