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Explaining IPC:SyncRep – Postgres Sync Replication is Not Actually Sync Replication
Postgres database-level “synchronous replication” does not actually mean the replication is synchronous. It’s a bit of a lie really. The replication is actually – always – asynchronous. What it actually means is “when the client issues a COMMIT then pause until we know the transaction is replicated.” In fact the primary writer database doesn’t need … Continue reading
Graviton2 versus Graviton4
Just a short post, because I thought this was pretty remarkable. Below, I have screenshots showing the CPU utilization of two AWS instances in us-west-2 which are running an identical workload. They are running the CloudNativePG playground, which is a production-like learning and testing environment (all running virtually inside the single ec2 instance, which can … Continue reading
Postgres Per-Connection Statistics
I’ve had a wish list for a few years now of observability-related things I’d love to see someday in community/open-source Postgres. A few items from my wish list: As I’ve noted in a few places, there has been slow and steady progress in Postgres over recent years. There’s also plenty of good discussion continuing on … Continue reading
Kubernetes Requests and Limits for Postgres
As Joe Drumgoole said a few days ago: so many Postgres providers. Aiven, AWS, Azure, Crunchy, DigitalOcean, EDB, GCP, Heroku, Neon, Nile, Oracle, Supabase, Tembo, Timescale, Xata, Yugabyte… 🤯 I’m sure there’s more I missed. And that’s not even the providers using Postgres underneath services they offer with a different focus than Postgres compatibility. (I … Continue reading
Good Benchmark Engineers and Postgres Benchmark Week
There are four major components to being a good benchmark engineer: Apparently it’s benchmark week in the Postgres world. I only have two data points but that’s enough for me! First data point: I’m visiting Portland. This Thursday Aug 22, the Portland Postgres Users Group (PDXPUG) is having a meetup where Paul Jungwirth is going … Continue reading
Postgres Indexes, Partitioning and LWLock:LockManager Scalability
I have decided that – in Postgres circles – I shall henceforth refer to 2023 as THE YEAR OF THE LOCK MANAGER’S REVENGE. Let me explain. Lets start with Bruce Momjian. He has an in-depth presentation about locking in general with PostgreSQL called “Unlocking the Postgres Lock Manager“. I see online that he’s been giving … Continue reading
UUID Benchmark War
This month’s PGSQL Phriday #015 topic is about UUIDs, hosted by Lætitia Avrot. Lætitia has called for a debate. No, no, no. I say let’s have an all-out war. A benchmark war. I have decided to orchestrate a benchmark war between four different methods of storing a primary key: The challenge is simple: insert one … Continue reading
Seattle User Group Thoughts and Fall Opportunities
Last Thursday was the first in-person Seattle Postgres Users Group meetup since early 2020. We didn’t formally track attendee companies, but I recall having Apple, AWS, Fred Hutch, Google, Microsoft and OtterTune all represented. Besides the presentation about performance, we also had pizza and drinks and a book table. I happily loaned out my copy … Continue reading
Researching the Performance Puzzle
The PostgreSQL Performance Puzzle was, perhaps, too easy – it didn’t take long for someone to guess the correct answer! But I didn’t see much discussion about why the difference or what was happening. My emphasis on the magnitude of the difference was a tip-off that there’s much more than meets the eye with this … Continue reading
PostgreSQL Performance Puzzle
Update 7/18: y’all guessed the answer to my puzzle very fast! At the bottom of this blog post, I’ve added the expressions that I used (with credit to those who guessed it), and also other expressions guessed by readers which exhibited similar behavior. I’ll do another follow-up blog post touching on several layers of this … Continue reading
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contact: schneider @ ardentperf.com
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