PostgreSQL autovacuum sessions alert

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The Autovacuum Sessions alert notifies you when its configured condition is met on PostgreSQL instances so you can investigate and respond.

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Alert summary

Platform: PostgreSQL
Alert category: General
Default enabled: false
Default evaluation frequency: Minute
Threshold label: Sessions
Unit: sessions

What Mini DBA checks

Mini DBA describes this alert as: Number of autovacuum sessions running Mini DBA evaluates this alert once a minute so changes are detected quickly.

How this alert helps

This alert highlights PostgreSQL maintenance pressure. It helps identify tables or transaction patterns that can increase bloat, weaken planner statistics, or allow transaction ID age to approach an unsafe level.

When to enable it

Enable it on PostgreSQL systems where delayed maintenance, table bloat, stale statistics, or transaction ID age would require investigation. Use table and workload baselines to avoid treating short maintenance bursts as incidents.

Threshold guidance

Threshold meaning: Sessions. Major threshold: 10 sessions. Minor threshold: 5 sessions. Comparison direction: over. For an over-threshold alert, decreasing a threshold makes that severity fire sooner; increasing it tolerates more load or pressure. Set the minor threshold as an early-warning level and the major threshold at the highest acceptable value for the service.

Remediation for an active alert

Review the affected tables, autovacuum and analyze history, dead tuples, transaction age, and long-running transactions. Tune table-level maintenance settings or run controlled maintenance, then confirm that cleanup and statistics collection keep pace with the workload.

Investigation workflow

Confirm the alert is still active and note the first seen time, affected instance, and severity.
Review the affected tables, dead tuples, maintenance history, transaction age, autovacuum settings, and long-running transactions in Mini DBA before changing configuration or ending sessions.
Compare the current value with the normal baseline for the same time of day or maintenance window.
Record the cause, corrective action, and whether thresholds or routing should be adjusted after the incident.

Avoiding alert noise

Use duration and table-count thresholds to avoid paging on a short maintenance cycle. Keep the alert sensitive enough to catch tables that remain overdue, transaction age that keeps rising, or maintenance that repeatedly fails to catch up.