A Disk Alert, a 392 GB Table, and Indexes Bigger Than the Data

A routine PostgreSQL disk alert led to the discovery and subsequent resolution of over 150 GB of unnecessary storage usage due to inefficient data management practices. The investigation revealed that a significant portion of the storage was occupied by oversized indexes, redundant JSON data repeated across millions of rows, and unused output blobs linked to GitHub check-runs. To address these inefficiencies, the author implemented several optimizations, such as eliminating redundant data storage and restructuring the database to use a lookup table for app metadata. The most immediate and substantial space savings were achieved by dropping unnecessary indexes, which freed up about 64 GB of space without altering the database's read paths. The author emphasizes the importance of treating disk alerts as opportunities for audits rather than mere maintenance tasks, as this approach can lead to significant storage savings and improved database performance over time.

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