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Unveiling the Power of Postgres: EDB BigAnimal Year In Review

January 11, 2024

As we look toward the possibilities in the year ahead, EDB is excited to bring you new products and capabilities in 2024, to help you get more out of Postgres. But before we start unveiling everything we have in store, let’s take a look back at some of the biggest accomplishments from the past year. 

In 2023, we did a grand total of 49 releases for BigAnimal, and added countless features to help customers use Postgres in exciting new ways. Keep reading for all the details, and stay tuned for what’s to come in the year ahead!

Big Momentum from BigAnimal

2023 was a big year for BigAnimal (pun intended) as we released new features and services to let you run your favorite database in the cloud. At EDB, we've tirelessly dedicated ourselves to refining and expanding the capabilities of BigAnimal with each new release and feature update. Our primary focus is on delivering transformative value to our customers leveraging PostgreSQL. Keep reading for a detailed look at the major releases and updates of BigAnimal throughout the year, and see for yourself the continuous evolution and enhancement of our product.

January:

  • Support for an additional AWS region: AWS Asia Pacific Southeast 2 (Sydney)
  • BigAnimal CLI v1.12.0 & v1.13.0 - allowing users to provision faraway replicas and get monitoring info for their clusters
  • Support for faraway replicas

In January, one of the major features we launched support for was faraway replicas. Faraway replicas are read-only replicas of EDB BigAnimal clusters that you can provision in any supported region. This is on top of supporting three different tiers of high availability and multiple cloud providers. We added this capability because EDB is committed to giving you the flexibility you need to run your applications your way.

We know that customers have a lot of important decisions to make about database infrastructure. Many organizations are ditching their legacy commercial database in favor of open source solutions like Community PostgreSQL. Meanwhile, many companies are adopting a cloud-first approach. And for good reason! There are strong advantages to moving to the cloud. Organizations become more flexible, elastic and scalable in their workloads while managing costs over the long term using subscription models. At the same time, organizations looking to take full advantage of cloud Postgres need to be careful when selecting their cloud vendor. The fact is, not all cloud providers are created equal, and choosing the wrong one could create more problems than solutions for your business. That’s why, at the end of January, we hosted a webinar to help customers choose the right Postgres vendor in the cloud and avoid any major cloud deployment risks. 

February: 

  • BigAnimal supports EDB Postgres Advanced Server v15 
  • BigAnimal Terraform provider v0.3.0

After much anticipation, one of the most requested integrations our customers asked for launched in February. We created a Terraform Provider for EDB BigAnimal to make infrastructure deployment easier. As you may know, Hashicorp’s Terraform is one of the most popular tools for managing cloud infrastructure. We’re all about listening to our customers and building the capabilities you want to see, so keep the requests coming! We also open-sourced the EDB BigAnimal Provider under the MPL 2.0 license so you can contribute as desired. With this Provider, you can quickly and easily add EDB BigAnimal to your existing Terraform configurations.

March:

  • Customizable maintenance windows 
  • PCI DSS Compliance Certification
  • New extensions added: 
    • Autocluster: a table access method extension from the Advanced Storage Pack that supports faster access for clustered data
    • Refdata: a table access method extension from the Advanced Storage Pack that increases performance and scalability of foreign key lookups on normalized data models
    • EDB Postgres Tuner is available in BigAnimal to provide intelligent parameter tuning recommendations based on your clusters' settings.
  • BigAnimal CLI v1.14.0

A major announcement came in March when EDB BigAnimal became certified by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). This was critical to us because we know our customers demand a trusted partner when they move their data to the cloud. Plus, getting BigAnimal certified as a PCI Level 1 Service Provider means that customers who use BigAnimal can take advantage of our certification to streamline their own PCI certification processes. 

April:

  • Multi-region EDB Postgres Distributed available in Preview 

May:

  • PgBouncer natively integrated in BigAnimal for single node and primary/standby clusters 
  • Support for an additional AWS region: Asia Pacific Southeast 3 (Jakarta) 
  • CLI v2.0.0 released, adding PGD provisioning support to the CLI

In May, EDB announced the integration of PgBouncer, a lightweight connect pooler, with BigAnimal, our fully managed cloud PostgreSQL database as a service. This built-in integration helps developers and DBAs more easily manage Postgres connections and maximize workload efficiency.

June:

  • Support for BigAnimal running in EDB’s cloud account on AWS, the dominant deployment model amongst other database cloud services. This gives customers an additional deployment choice to Bring-Your-Own-Account. 
  • Support for a self-service pay-go purchase experience for BigAnimal
  • Postgres superuser capabilities available for single node and primary/standby clusters

With new releases in June, EDB BigAnimal gives the power of PostgreSQL to developers by providing self-service access to a full-featured Postgres-as-a-Service experience. With this release, developers get access to new digital self-service and free trial features for deployment on any cloud. Plus, just as organizational leaders are trying to understand which hybrid cloud or multi-cloud architectures are best suited for business workloads, polycloud arrives on the scene! No worries, EDB is here to help, with our winning combination of public cloud infrastructure and database power.

Also in June, we proudly announced that EDB BigAnimal was adding self-service superuser access to expand Postgres cloud administrative controls. This exciting new release means customers can access expanded controls over their clusters directly from BigAnimal interfaces when using their own cloud accounts. It’s a big deal because self-service superuser access provides BigAnimal users with a level of control over Postgres deployments in their cloud environments that other fully managed Postgres cloud services cannot offer.

July:

  • Support for Google Cloud Platform - BigAnimal officially supports all of the major CSPs
  • BigAnimal Terraform provider v0.5.1
  • CLI v2.1.0 released to support GCP
  • New extensions added: EDB Wait States, EDB Query Advisor, and Postgres Failover Slots. 

Customers wanting to use EDB BigAnimal on Google Cloud got their wish in July. We made EDB BigAnimal fully managed Postgres-as-a-Service available in Google Cloud because we heard how important it is for our customers to be able to align with multi-cloud strategies. With this enhanced cloud deployment option, BigAnimal now provides continuous availability, geo-distributed data, and unmatched Oracle compatibility on any cloud infrastructure. 

EDB BigAnimal got even more customizable for our customers when we announced the release of several new Postgres extensions available for clusters. It’s releases like this that demonstrate EDB’s dedication to helping our customers get the most out of their Postgres database environments. EDB customers can use both commercial and open source extensions to increase data scalability and access, giving them more flexibility to use Postgres however they want. 

We want to make it as easy as possible for organizations to make the switch to EDB BigAnimal. Our product can be a game changer for businesses looking to move their database to the cloud. BigAnimal has changed the way you can deploy your Postgres Cloud solution. We know there’s a lot to consider with Postgres Cloud, so in July we released a brand new Buying Guide that explains which BigAnimal features meet your critical requirements.

August:

  • EDB Postgres Distributed Generally Available on BigAnimal
  • CLI v3.0.0 - released to support BigAnimal hosted provisioning

In August we announced the release of EDB Postgres Distributed on EDB BigAnimal. With this release, enterprises can successfully deploy geo-distributed, active-active architectures for their Postgres databases. This latest release brings EDB’s best-in-class high availability to Postgres databases running on any cloud.

September:

  • Support for BigAnimal running in EDB’s cloud account on Azure 
  • BigAnimal added support for database-level authentication on Bring-Your-Own-Account deployments using customer’s cloud account’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) credentials

October:

  • BigAnimal supports PostgreSQL v16
  • BigAnimal CLI v3.2.0
  • BigAnimal Terraform Provider v0.6.1 
  • New extension added: pg_cron, a cron-based job scheduler for Postgres

November:

We made it easier than ever to find, buy, and deploy our products when we announced in November that EDB BigAnimal and EDB Postgres Advanced Server (EPAS) are now available in AWS Marketplace. By making our products available in AWS Marketplace, we’re simplifying procurement and improving operational agility. AWS customers can access EDB BigAnimal features like Oracle compatibility and distributed high availability within the AWS Marketplace, streamlining their cloud experiences and fueling business growth.

December:

  • Native monitoring within BigAnimal 

At EDB, we are committed to helping our customers unlock the power of Postgres. Our aim is simple: to empower you to get more out of your favorite database. With BigAnimal, we're not just offering a database solution; we're providing a catalyst for change. By embracing BigAnimal, our customers have unlocked a path to efficiency, scalability and innovation, transforming the way they operate and thrive in today's dynamic business landscape.

For our valued EDB customers, optimizing your investment in BigAnimal goes hand in hand with unlocking its full potential. To maximize the benefits, consider diving deeper into our suite of features and functionalities. Start by fine-tuning your database configurations—tailoring them to your specific workloads can dramatically enhance performance. Additionally, leverage our extensive documentation and free BigAnimal on-demand training to empower your team with in-depth knowledge of BigAnimal's capabilities. Explore our regular webinars, where you can glean insights from industry experts and fellow users. Another powerful strategy involves staying current with our frequent updates and releases; these often pack invaluable optimizations and new functionalities.

Lastly, don't hesitate to reach out to our dedicated support team for personalized guidance and troubleshooting. By harnessing these strategies and resources, you're poised to get the maximum value from your EDB investment and elevate your database operations to new heights.
 

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