PGConf.Russia 2018

I would like to share experience in runing PostgreSQL in dockerized environments, describe the specific issues and tools you will need to solve them.

• Which problems could be solved by Docker for PostgreSQL, e.g. PostgreSQLPro.9.6
• Work of IT team with Docker in development, testing and production environments
  • Using image repository and build servers for image testing
• Issues in production environment:
  • With network activity
  • With persistent repositories for Docker
  • With additional services
  • With load balancing and fail-safety
• Running PostgreSQL-base applications, such as:
  • SonarQube
  • Gitlab
  • 1С platform

PostgreSQL looks very competitive with other mainstream databases on OLTP workload (execution of large number of simple queries). But on OLAP queries, requiring processing of larger volumes of data, DBMS-es oriented on analytic queries processing can provide an order of magnitude better speed. The following factors limit Postgres OLAP performance:

• Unpacking tuple overhead (tuple_deform)
• Interpretation overhead (Postgres executor has to interpret query execution plan)
• Abstraction penalty (support of abstract data types)
• Pull model overhead (operators are pulling tuples from heap page one-by-one, resulting numerous repeated accesses to the page)
• MVCC overhead (extra per-tuple storage + visibility check cost)

All this issues can be solved using vectorized executor, which proceed bulk of values at once. In this presentation I will show how vector operations can be implemented in Postgres as standard Postgres extension, not affecting Postgres core. The approach is based on introducing special types: tile types, which can be used instead of normal (scalar) types and implement vector operations. Postgres extension mechanism, such as UDT (user-defined type), FDW (foreign data wrappers), executor hooks are used to let users work with vectorized tables almost in the same way as with normal tables. But more than 10 times faster because of vector operations.

Storing binary data in database tables is sometimes a good solution for a particular project. But sometimes, due to changes in conditions or insufficient consideration of decisions, such storage is becoming a real nightmare. If there is an understanding of how and where to place these data, the transition to the new solutions are often very hard, often require modification in the application code and downtime the system for migration. The presentation is a particular solution of such problems. Our extension allows to move binary data from database to the storage Ceph and not only. And does it seamless for the applications.

Patroni is a Python application to create high-availability PostgreSQL clusters based on the streaming replication. It is used by Red Hat, IBM Compose, Zalando and many other companies. This tutorial will highlight Patroni architecture, provide attendees with hands-on experience of configuring high-availability PostgreSQL clusters with Patroni, describe how to take advantage of numerous additional features and give an opportunity to learn more about common mistakes related to running Patroni and its troubleshooting.

In order to take most out of the Patroni tutorial one needs a laptop with git, vagrant and virtual box installed.

Vagrant can be obtained from https://www.vagrantup.com Virtualbox is at https://www.vagrantup.com

Alternatively, one can install your Linux distribution packages (or use homebrew on Mac).

Once Vagrant and Virtualbox are installed one can run the Patroni VM by issuing the following commands:

$ git clone https://github.com/alexeyklyukin/patroni-training
$ cd patroni-training
$ vagrant up

When the setup concludes Patroni box can be accessed via ssh using vagrant ssh command.