PgConf.Russia 2020

In Zabbix-server 4.4, a new Zabbix-agent has become available. It is written in Golang, has a plug-in structure, keeps a permanent connection and makes it possible to control metrics in runtime. We will make an overview of the Zabbix-agent 2 and talk about how to develop plugins for it, in particular, the PostgreSQL monitoring plugin developed by Postgres Professional in collaboration with Zabbix.

Moscow public transport vehicles when moving report their coordinates via GLONASS. Collected data is used for various analyses including timetable development, bottlenecks detection and planning the bus lanes. Until recently we used the PostGIS extension for this purpose but now we are switching to a new PG extension — MobilityDB — designed especially for geodata time series processing. I have compared the table size and the performance of our solution without and with MobilityDB and happy to present the results.

If you care about Postgres performance, there are a number of hardware acceleration options to help with different use cases. Intel Optane DC persistent memory creates new tier in data hierarchy allowing developers to utilize performance of traditional memory combining with volume and persistency of block storage devices. Unlike traditional DRAM-only in-memory systems, where memory is small, expensive, and volatile, Intel Optane DC persistent memory makes it possible to run larger Postgres databases (terabytes) in memory for higher performance. FPGAs are integrated circuits that can be reprogrammed dynamically to accelerate a specific workload such as SQL execution and data compression. FPGA accelerators extend Postgres with hundreds of SQL reader and writer processes that work in parallel on the FPGA. It’s similar to adding hundreds new cores to boost parallel processing on your server.

We would like to share our test results (including performance testing) of PostgreSQL/Citrus and MongoDB for our company's data. It has been a very exciting process with unexpected turns and a somewhat controversial outcome.