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Go ahead, self-host Postgres

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Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#91

Post by ch2026 »

orev wrote: post #46
donatj wrote: post #28

The author brings up the point, but I have always found surprising how much more expensive managed databases are than a comparable VPS. I would expect a little bit more as a cost of the convenience, but in my experience it's generally multiple times the expense. It's wild. This has kept me away from managed databases in all but my largest projects.

Once they convince you that you can’t do it yourself, you end up relying on them, but didn’t develop the skills you would need to migrate to another provider when they start raising prices. And they keep raising prices because by then you have no choice.

Wait, are you talking about cloud providers or LLMs?

Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#92

Post by franckpachot »

heipei wrote: post #15

I still don't get how folks can hype Postgres with every second post on HN, yet there is no simple batteries-included way to run a HA Postgres cluster with automatic failover like you can do with MongoDB. I'm genuinely curious how people deal with this in production when they're self-hosting.

Beyond the hype, the PostgreSQL community is aware of the lack of "batteries-included" HA. This discussion on the idea of a Built-in Raft replication mentions MongoDB as:

>> "God Send". Everything just worked. Replication was as reliable as one could imagine. It outlives several hardware incidents without manual intervention. It allowed cluster maintenance (software and hardware upgrades) without application downtime. I really dream PostgreSQL will be as reliable as MongoDB without need of external services.

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/0e01fb4d-f8ea-4ca9-8c9...

Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#93

Post by kachapopopow »

since this is on the front page (again?) I guess I'll chime in: learn kubernetes - it's worth it. It did take me 3 attempts at it to finally wrap my head around it I really suggest trying out many different things and see what works for you.

And I really recommend starting with *default* k3s, do not look at any alternatives to cni, csi, networked storage - treat your first cluster as something that can spontaniously fail and don't bother keeping it clean learn as much as you can.

Once you have that, you can use great open-source k8s native controllers which take care of vast majority of requirements when it comes to self-hosting and save more time in the long run than it took to set up and learn these things.

Honerable mentions: k9s, lens(I do not suggest using it in the long-term, but UI is really good as a starting point), rancher webui.

PostgreSQL specifically: https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/cloudnative-pg If you really want networked storage: https://github.com/longhorn/longhorn

I do not recommend ceph unless you are okay with not using shared filesystems as they have a bunch of gotchas or if you want S3 without having to install a dedicated deployment for it.

Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#94

Post by moxplod »

newsoftheday wrote: post #22
arichard123 wrote: post #2

I've been self hosting it for 20 years. Best technical decision I ever made. Rock solid

I've been selfhosting it for at least 10 years, it and mysql, mysql longer. No issues selfhosting either. I have backups and I know they work.

What server company are you guys using with high reliability? Looking for server in US-East right now.

Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#95

Post by markstos »

I hosted PostgreSQL professionally for over a decade.

Overall, a good experience. Very stable service and when performance issues did periodically arise, I like that we had full access to all details to understand the root cause and tune details.

Nobody was employeed as a full-time DBA. We had plenty of other things going on in addition to running PostgreSQL.

Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#96

Post by Nextgrid »

zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #74

I've operated both self-hosted and managed database clusters with complex topologies and mission-critical data at well-known tech companies. Managed database services mostly automate a subset of routine operational work, things like backups, some configuration management, and software upgrades. But they don't remove the need for real database operations. You still have to validate restores, build and rehearse a disas…

I've had an RDS instance run out of disk space and then get stuck in "modifying" for 24 hours (until an AWS operator manually SSH'd in I guess). We had to restore from the latest snapshot and manually rebuild the missing data from logs/other artifacts in the meantime to restore service.

I would've very much preferred being able to SSH in myself and fix it on the spot. Ironically the only reason it ran out of space in the first place is that the AWS markup on that is so huge we were operating with little margin for error; none of that would happen with a bare-metal host where I can rent 1TB of NVME for a mere 20 bucks a month.

As far as I know we never got any kind of compensation for this, so RDS ended up being a net negative for this company, tens of thousands spent over a few years for laptop-grade performance and it couldn't even do its promised job the only time it was needed.

Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#97

Post by dvtkrlbs »

notaseojh wrote: post #27
ijustlovemath wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not much to recommend; just use the Postgres from your distribution's LTS repo. I like Debian for its rock solid stability.

"just use postgres from your distro" is *wildly* underselling the amount of work that it takes to go from apt install postgres to having a production ready setup (backups, replica, pooling, etc). Granted, if it's a tiny database just pg-dumping might be enough, but for many that isn't going to be enough.

I don't think any of these would take more than a week to setup. Assuming you create a nice runbook with every step it would not be horrible to maintain as well. Barman for backups and unless you need multi-master you can use the builtin publication and subscription. Though with scale things can complicated really fast but most of the time you won't that much traffic to have something complicated.

Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#98

Post by satvikpendem »

gynecologist wrote: post #87

I didnt even know there were companies that would host postgres for you. I self host it for my personal projects with 0 users and it works just fine, so I don't know why anyone would do it any differently.

I can't tell if this is satire or not with the first sentence and the "0 users" parts of your comment, but I know several solo devs with millions of users who self host their database and apps as well.

Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#99

Post by empthought »

bradley13 wrote: post #45

Huh? Maybe I missed something, but...why should self-hosting a database server be hard or scary? Sure, you are then responsible for security backups, etc...but that's not really different in the cloud - if anything, the cloud makes it more complicated.

Self-hosting a database server is not particularly hard or scary for an engineer.

Hiring and replacing engineers who can and want to manage database servers can be hard or scary for employers.

Re: Go ahead, self-host Postgres

#100

Post by satvikpendem »

kachapopopow wrote: post #93

since this is on the front page (again?) I guess I'll chime in: learn kubernetes - it's worth it. It did take me 3 attempts at it to finally wrap my head around it I really suggest trying out many different things and see what works for you. And I really recommend starting with *default* k3s, do not look at any alternatives to cni, csi, networked storage - treat your first cluster as something that can spontaniously…

Check out canine.sh, it's to Kubernetes what Coolify or Dokploy is to Docker, if you're familiar with self hosted open source PaaS.
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