Ansible Tower PSQL tuning

postgres.py

# Ansible Tower database settings.

'''
This is for a Tower instance using a remote postgresql database.
Lines from ATOMIC_REQUESTS to PORT are default settings
CONN_MAX_AGE and OPTIONS dict are added in
This change seemingly allows Tower to re-use its database connections,
which can MASSIVELY reduce CPU load if running very verbose playbooks.
Currently no real downsides noticed
'''

DATABASES = {
   'default': {
       'ATOMIC_REQUESTS': True,
       'ENGINE': 'awx.main.db.profiled_pg',
       'NAME': 'tower',
       'USER': 'redacted',
       'PASSWORD': """redacted""",
       'HOST': 'redacted.postgres.database.azure.com',
       'PORT': 5432,
       'CONN_MAX_AGE': 60,
       'OPTIONS': {
           'keepalives_idle': 5,
           'keepalives_interval': 1,
           'keepalives_count': 5,
       },
   }
}

Note: this file is located at /etc/tower/conf.d/postgres.py on a RHEL 7 Ansible Tower install.

Example performance improvement: Running a playbook that manages Fortigate firewall policies reduced the CPU load on an 8-CPU azure database server from 85-90% (and caused it to sit at high CPU for up to 20 minutes after the playbook finished), to 8% with no post-playbook lag.

(The playbook takes about 5-10 minutes to run and can generate upwards of 100k events)