8 min read
Postgres Major Version Upgrades Without the Drama
Major version upgrades are intimidating until you have done one cleanly. Here is the playbook I use, the failure modes I have seen, and what to test before you commit.
PostgreSQL Field Notes
Notes for the problems that show up after launch: bad plans, awkward migrations, index debt, vacuum pressure, replica lag, and the small decisions that make PostgreSQL easier to operate.
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8 min read
Zero-Downtime Postgres Migrations: The Three Patterns That Cover Most Cases
Zero-downtime migrations work when you split correctness from rollout: expand, backfill, dual-read or dual-write, validate, switch, then clean up.
13 min read
PostgreSQL VACUUM: Dead Tuples, Bloat, and Wraparound
VACUUM problems are cleanup debt. Dead tuples, bloat, frozen XIDs, and autovacuum lag turn normal queries into incident material when nobody is watching.
6 min read
Long-Running Transactions: The Quietest Way to Damage Your Postgres
Long transactions quietly hold back vacuum, keep locks alive, exhaust pools, and make old row versions stick around long after users moved on.
8 min read
Transaction Isolation in Postgres Without the Textbook Fog
Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Serializable. The textbook treatment puts most readers to sleep. Here is what each one actually means for your application.
6 min read
Deadlock Prevention in Postgres: Design It Out, Do Not Just Retry
Deadlocks are the symptom of a design that allows two transactions to hold each other's locks. The fix is rarely retry logic. Here is what to look for instead.
5 min read
ALTER TABLE Locks in Postgres: The Reference I Wish I Had Five Years Ago
ALTER TABLE is dangerous when you review syntax instead of locks. Some changes are instant, some queue behind writes, and some rewrite the whole table.
6 min read
VACUUM FREEZE in Postgres: The 4 a.m. Page You Can Prevent
Transaction ID wraparound is rare, dramatic, and entirely avoidable. Here is what FREEZE actually does, and the autovacuum settings that keep you out of single-user mode.
6 min read
Measuring Table Bloat in Postgres: The Question, Answered Honestly
Bloat measurement is useful only when it changes a cleanup decision. Learn when estimates are good enough, when pgstattuple is worth the cost, and what action follows.
12 min read
PostgreSQL Memory Tuning: shared_buffers, work_mem, and Cache
Postgres memory tuning is a budget problem. shared_buffers, OS cache, work_mem, maintenance work, and connection count all spend the same RAM.
7 min read
When the Postgres Disk Fills: A Playbook From the 2 a.m. End of It
Disk-full on a Postgres server is rarely just one thing. WAL, temp files, logs, and delayed cleanup arrive together. The recovery is mostly about what you prepared before.
6 min read
Postgres Connection Storms: When the Pool Becomes the Outage
Connection storms look like database outages but usually start in pools, retries, autoscaling, deploys, and health checks. The fix is shaping pressure before it reaches Postgres.