OtterTune explained in 5 minutes

Modern databases have hundreds of configuration “knobs” that affect the performance of the database. It’s becoming impractical for humans to know how to tune all these knobs for a single database let alone tens or hundreds of databases.

OtterTune solves this problem by using machine learning to automate database configuration tuning, which results in better database price-performance.

OtterTune automatic database tuning explained

In this five-minute video, we explain how OtterTune works:

1. Connecting OtterTune to your database – no special software or access to user data is required.

2. Monitoring your database’s performance and collecting settings and metrics.

3. Training machine learning models to predict how your database’s performance will change as its configuration knobs change.

4. Automatically installing the new configuration and monitoring its effect.

5. Continually monitoring your database to make sure that it is always using the most optimal configuration.

Watching OtterTune tune an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL database

The video also walks you through a demonstration in which OtterTune tunes an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL database configured with the default RDS settings and running a write-heavy transactional (TPC-C) workload.

After several minutes you’ll see that OtterTune has generated the first new configuration and installed it in the database. After several more iterations you’ll see that the OtterTune-optimized database achieves 87% higher throughput than the original configuration.

Can OtterTune improve your DBMS performance? Try it out!

If you’d like to try OtterTune on your database(s), let us know, and we’ll help you get started.