Use the Temp Bytes Per Second alert in Mini DBA to monitor PostgreSQL instances and make this condition visible before it becomes a wider database incident.
Mini DBA describes this alert as: High temporary file write rate often indicates sorts or hashes spilling to disk. Review work_mem and expensive queries. The default evaluation frequency is Minute, so the alert is intended to be close enough to operational reality for live triage. Because duration is used, Mini DBA can avoid treating a single short spike as a full incident when the condition clears quickly.
This alert protects storage and recovery capacity. It helps you find growth, retention, and backup conditions that can stop writes, break recovery objectives, or leave the server without enough working space for normal database activity.
Enable it once the instance has a normal workload baseline. It is especially useful on busy OLTP, reporting, and integration systems where resource pressure can quickly become user-visible.
Threshold meaning: MB/sec. Major threshold: 100 MB/sec. Minor threshold: 25 MB/sec. Comparison direction: "over". Duration is used, so prefer requiring the condition to persist before paging people for transient spikes. Use higher thresholds on batch-heavy, development, or intentionally bursty systems where brief pressure is expected. Use lower thresholds on latency-sensitive production systems, small instances with little headroom, and services with strict recovery or availability commitments.
Use the query, wait, and performance views to find the statement or subsystem behind the pressure. Compare against the recent baseline, update statistics, tune indexes, adjust application batching, and move maintenance work away from peak periods where possible.
Storage alerts should usually stay enabled even on quiet systems because the impact of missing them is high. Tune warning thresholds to leave enough time for approval, provisioning, and validation, especially when storage changes are handled by another infrastructure team.