In our recent “Running Postgres in the Cloud” webinar, EDB Senior Client Engineer Tom Rieger helped attendees better understand the factors in maximizing Postgres database performance on today’s cloud service provider (CSP) environments.
During his time at EDB, Tom has identified how clients can realize better Oracle-compatible Postgres performance and decrease costs on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
In the subsections that follow, we review some key takeaways from our webinar, including:
- How to better understand cloud infrastructure cost complexities in your decision-making
- Optimizing Postgres database performance in the cloud
- Maximizing EDB’s Postgres innovations to extend the value of running our BigAnimal Postgres-as-a-Service on AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure
- Reducing Oracle migration complexity
When it comes to cloud infrastructure costs with Postgres, it pays to understand the fine print
Various factors contribute to Postgres costs on cloud infrastructures, including storage, compute and data transfer. Understanding these cost drivers is crucial for assessing your actual Postgres database expenses. As a result, you should consider the costs associated with:
- Backups—Depending on the CSP vendor offering, cross-zone backup durability can cost twice the price of a standard backup. In this model, if you turn on two read replicas to achieve high availability, your backup cost would effectively triple.
- Replica processes—Another cloud vendor’s Postgres approach enables you to have replica processes both within and across a region. However, it’s costly to have replicas across regions in that vendor model, and the replicas all have to be used in the same compute and storage IOPS subsystem.
- Compute options—Here’s what’s even more confusing: when it comes to their Postgres offerings, CSPs offer dozens of choices in compute options. In fact, one CSP provides more than 65 choices of 8-CPU compute options. Here’s the moral of this story: from a data processing perspective, you need to strike a balance between the data processing environment, creating an SLA that is right for that workload and deploying a performant environment at the least cost.
As a result, effectively controlling your Postgres costs depends on the ability to “right-size” your infrastructure regarding backups, replica processes and compute options.
Postgres database optimization essentials in the cloud
Generally speaking, today’s leading cloud service providers have added to their cloud infrastructure expertise and differentiated their respective offerings by adding network, storage and compute resources. While these vendors provide comprehensive infrastructure support options, they don’t patch the database—at all—and they lag behind in introducing their own Postgres technology capabilities.
As one of the main contributors to PostgreSQL, EDB has optimized the database experience provided to the developer community in BigAnimal. In addition, EDB provides the best Postgres support in the industry, with advanced break-fix support and security vulnerability identification that surpass troubleshooting-only Postgres maintenance approaches.
Beyond these considerations, BigAnimal provides the same Oracle-compatible Postgres database experience on any cloud, with our fully managed service providing:
- Extreme high availability and backup options, which are enhanced by EDB Postgres Distributed on BigAnimal. Our approach allows developers to build highly resilient Postgres applications on any cloud, giving you the power to deploy apps with active-active use cases and choose the best environment for your data. Only EDB Postgres Distributed on BigAnimal offers a 99.995% SLA for running Postgres in the cloud.
- A cloud-agnostic approach that enables you to run BigAnimal on AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, while providing the flexibility to have one cluster running in AWS and another in Azure. You can also deploy our fully managed Postgres solution within minutes on BigAnimal’s cloud account, which supports AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
- Unmatched Postgres tuning capabilities, with database tuning extension and automation features. Take the guesswork out of tuning and configuring your Postgres database to meet your organizational database requirements with EDB BigAnimal.
- 24x7 monitoring, which allows you to focus on your business rather than your database.
Extended value offered by the broader EDB Postgres ecosystem
BigAnimal makes life easier for those managing and relying on maximized database performance in any cloud environment, including:
- Automating deployment, with BigAnimal self-service features providing a full-featured Postgres database that can be fully configured and deployed within minutes on any cloud.
- Reducing Oracle migration complexity, with our EDB Postgres Advanced Server (EPAS) making it easier to move your Oracle workloads into your cloud infrastructure or BigAnimal’s cloud account.
- Easing disaster recovery by taking advantage of multi-region, always-on architectures to ensure your DR solution is always operational. As a result, you improve the reliability and availability of your high-demand applications.
Access the Webinar replay, and get started with your BigAnimal Postgres experience
Managing costs in a Postgres database environment is critical for any organization looking to maximize efficiency and minimize expenses when moving to the cloud. By understanding the cost drivers and optimizing resources, you can right-size your Postgres experience without compromising database performance for your users.
If you missed the live “Running Postgres in the Cloud” webinar, catch the replay here.
Want to learn more? You can get started on BigAnimal today—claim $300 in free credits, deploy in BigAnimal’s cloud account or your own and spin up a cluster in minutes.