PgConf.Russia 2020

Recently, I was working on a project where graphQL was used for sending requests to its .NET Core backend, but this was not a good idea. The point is, a graphQL query is a hierarchical structure with a dynamic set of fields. It’s difficult to perform such requests via a statically-typed programming language and a relational database as suggested by the tools available. So, I came up with the idea of using the plv8 extension and perform graphQL queries right on the database side. It took me about two hours to develop a working prototype that could perform the same queries as the software under development for more than one month! Then various improvements have been made and I want to introduce them all. If you are thinking of using graphQL instead of REST, my speech could be most useful and could help you to save a lot of time.

pg_probackup is a flexible tool that allows choosing the backup strategy depending on the write load of the PostgreSQL cluster, as well as offers a number of other features that can facilitate this vital aspect of database maintenance. In this tutorial, we will see how to apply this tool in practice.

In my talk, I will tell how we built a geographically distributed system of personal data storage based on Open Source software and PostgreSQL. The concept of the inCountry business is to provide customers with a ready-to-use infrastructure for personal data storage. Our business customers are ensured that their customer’s personal data is securely stored within their country’s borders. We wrote an API and SDK and built a variety of services. Our system complies with generally accepted security standards (SOC Type 1, Type 2, PCI DSS, etc.). We built our infrastructure with Consul, Nomad, and Vault, used PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch as a storage system, Nginx, Jenkins, Artifactory, other tools to automate management and deployment. We have assembled our development and management teams - DevOps, Security, Monitoring, and DBA. We use both cloud providers and bare-metal servers located in different regions of the world. Development of the system architecture and ensuring the stability of the infrastructure, consistent and secure operation of all its components is the main task facing our teams.

Patroni and Stolon are two of the most popular and advanced solutions for orchestrating PostgreSQL and ensuring auto-failover for clusters with the Leader-Followers configuration. However, engineers who migrate from good old tools like Corosync&Pacemaker or built-in solutions of other DBMS often run into issues when installing these tools and figuring out the purpose of each component.
In this tutorial, we will go through a typical installation procedure of Patroni and Stolon clusters on virtual machines (not in containers), as well as review their behavior in case of various infrastructure failures. The whole process will be demonstrated on three vagrant virtual machines with pre-built images. You can follow along on your own system if you set up the required environment.