Comment by xwowsersx

I've recently been spending a fair amount of time trying to improve query performance on RDS. This includes reviewing and optimizing particularly nasty queries, tuning PG configuration (min_wal_size, random_page_cost, work_mem, etc). I am using a db.t3.xlarge with general purpose SSD (gp2) for a web server that sees moderate writes and a lot of reads. I know there's no real way to know other than through testing, but I'm not clear on which instance type best serves our needs — I think it may very well be the case that the t3 family isn't fit for our purposes. I'm also unclear on whether we ought to switch to provisioned IOPS SSD. Does anyone have any general pointers here? I know the question is pretty open-ended, but would be great if anyone has general advice from personal experience?