From their article: "Additionally we had been running with far too much delay in vacuuming which meant lower load on the system, but more idle time in maintena

From their article: "Additionally we had been running with far too much delay in vacuuming which meant lower load on the system, but more idle time in maintenance." So, vacuum wasn't given the resources to keep up with their load, and it's not clear if they were supplementing with manual vacuums during quiet times. Nor was it clear when they started reacting, as PostgreSQL (also outlined in their documentation link), will start squawking about wraparound well before it shuts down, or the monitoring they had in place for whether or not autovacuum/vacuum was keeping up with the workload, or the number of locks their application was taking (locks can block autovacuum). Adjusting the autovacuum settings by table will give you finer control over the postgresql.conf parameters to better match the workload for specific tables, as well. Partitioning would have also helped make the actively written part of the table smaller, and older data could be vacuumed with VACUUM FREEZE, or deleted later. There are extensions to help make that easier. https://github.com/keithf4/pg_partman https://github.com/keithf4/pg_partman Josh Berkus of PgExperts has some great advice here: https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/21068/aggressive-autovacuum-on-postgresql https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/21068/aggressive-aut... So does Jim Nasby, here: http://bluetreble.com/2014/10/postgres-mvcc-and-a-look-at-vacuuming/ http://bluetreble.com/2014/10/postgres-mvcc-and-a-look-at-va... Regarding monitoring, check_postgres.pl would give them an idea that their vacuuming settings needed adjustment sooner, or their application locking needed to be adjusted to not block autovacuum. https://bucardo.org/check_postgres/check_postgres.pl.html#txn_wraparound https://bucardo.org/check_postgres/check_postgres.pl.html#tx... https://bucardo.org/check_postgres/check_postgres.pl.html#last_autovacuum https://bucardo.org/check_postgres/check_postgres.pl.html#la... https://bucardo.org/check_postgres/check_postgres.pl.html#locks https://bucardo.org/check_postgres/check_postgres.pl.html#lo... It's easy to mention things after the fact, though, and it's good they got things up and running again for their customers.