Blocked autovacuum allows unbounded bloat accumulation

Long-running transactions block autovacuum from reclaiming space, causing unbounded bloat in both heap and indexes. This directly leads to data locality issues and excessive buffer reads.

Ensure autovacuum is enabled. Identify and terminate long-running transactions that block autovacuum. Tune autovacuum to run more frequently using autovacuum configuration parameters. Monitor for autovacuum activity gaps.