PgConf.Russia 2017

This talk is intended for Oracle DBAs whose are considering to start using PostgreSQL as another RDBMS engine in their DB portfolio or for PostgreSQL DBAs, who wants to learn some of similarities and differences between Oracle and PostgreSQL. This talk is not intended to be a migration guideline neither advocating one platform over another. General database structure overview for both platforms will be compared in terms of memory configuration parameters; logical to physical structure as well as we’ll touch some security point of view and backup & recovery tools available. Oracle container databases are not covered. The talk want’s to help create a bridge for DBA and avoid some frustrations at the first Oracle DBA step to discover, learn and start using PostgreSQL as reliable fully functional database.

VIDEO

Most of the main Skype services use a database platform based on PostgreSQL and other open-source technologies, such as Skytools, plProxy, pgBouncer, etc. This platform consists of several hundreds of servers with thousands of databases, which process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. At the same time, the platform architecture allows its users (applications and their developers) to work with "logical" databases, without any worries about their real “physical” structure.

Our Skype Database Platform team is responsible for the database platform infrastructure. We develop automation systems for various processes that help us ensure service reliability and facilitate development, testing, and deployment of code. In this presentation, I will outline the database platform architecture, review its main components, and tell you about the methods we use in our every-day work to ensure high availability, scalability, replication, fault tolerance, and more.