These are a collection of things that I personally think every production Postgres system should have. Much of this is widely agreed; my peers and I just assume that it’s always a good idea. There is a bit of bias toward my opinions. Within the database community there’s always a bit of healthy debate around ideas!

These apply regardless of whether you manage Postgres on your own hardware in your own datacenter, or whether you use hosted or managed Postgres from a provider like Amazon RDS.

The ultimate goal of the happiness hints is to make you curious and suggest directions that are worth some digging and thinking. Even if we disagree about something, our production systems will all be better for having engaged in a discussion. Everything here is intentionally included and thoughtfully worded and feels important to say.