Connection headroom planning
Headroom protects you from traffic spikes and operational tasks. Reserve a portion of connections for admin access, migrations, and incident response before allocating budgets to pods.
Example: max_connections of 1200 with 25% headroom and 80 reserved yields usable connections of 1200 × 0.75 − 80 = 820.
FAQs
How much headroom should I use? It depends on burstiness and operational needs, but 15–30% is a common planning range.
Do reserved connections matter? Yes. Without them, operational work can fail during peak usage.
Does headroom change max_connections? No. It changes how much of the limit you consider usable.
Open the preset
Use the safety-first preset to model higher headroom and reserved capacity.
Open calculator with this preset