PostgreSQL vs. Linux kernel versions
I've published multiple benchmarks comparing different PostgreSQL versions, as for example the performance archaeology talk (evaluating PostgreSQL 7.4 up to 9.4), and all those benchmark assumed fixed environment (hardware, kernel, ...). Which is fine in many cases (e.g. when evaluating performance impact of a patch), but on production those things do change over time - you get hardware upgrades and from time to time you get an update with a new kernel version.
For hardware upgrades (better storage, more RAM, faster CPUs, ...), the impact is usually fairly easy to predict, and moreover people generally realize they need to assess the impact by analyzing the bottlenecks on production and perhaps even testing the new hardware first.
But for what about kernel updates? Sadly we usually don't do much benchmarking in this area. The assumption is mostly that new kernels are better than older ones (faster, more efficient, scale to more CPU cores). But is it really true? And how big is the difference? For example what if you upgrade a kernel from 3.0 to 4.7 - will that affect the performance, and if yes, will the performance improve or not?
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