PgConf.Russia 2016

In addition to providing a general purpose web platform, Heroku has a large, supporting Postgres service. Over the years, we've learned a lot about running Postgres at scale.
In this talk, we'll cover:

• why Postgres is attractive to run as a cloud service
• how to provision, manage, and monitor a Postgres fleet
• tradeoffs needed to make Postgres work in this environment
• automating failure recovery
• and more

We'll discuss how does Linux work with virtual memory. The following topics will be covered: * x86-64 page table, context switch and page fault; * internals of virtual memory management (VMM) in Linux; * page eviction methods in Linux, page cache and anonymous pages; * huge and gigantic pages, transparent huge pages; * how mmap(2) works and what madvise(2), msync(2) etc. provide; * why large databases don't use mmap(2), but rather implement buffer pool on their own; * ans surely how to tune Linux VMM using sysctl.

Unlike most other databases, PostgreSQL is developed by a community, and not by a company or even a foundation. Those who have been members of this community for a long time generally consider this a strength, but it can often be confusing to outsiders who are more used to dealing with traditional organization. For those who are not already on the inside, this talk will give an introduction to how the PostgreSQL community works and how the different parties interact, as well as how this has evolved over the years.

Postgres 9.5 adds many features designed to enhance the productivity of developers: UPSERT, CUBE, ROLLUP, JSONB functions, and PostGIS improvements. For administrators, it has row-level security, a new index type, and performance enhancements for large servers. This talk covers the top ten new features that appeared in the Postgres 9.5 release. It will also cover some of the major focuses for post-9.5 releases.