May 2019 Newsletter from Citus Data (now part of Microsoft)

Video of Marco’s demo at Microsoft Build: how Citus & Microsoft Azure can help your operational analytics

In this short 4.5 min video, Citus engineer Marco Slot will show you how to use a 10-node Hyperscale (Citus) database cluster on Azure Database for PostgreSQL—with 320 cores and 2.5 TB of memory. Yielding 2 millisecond query response times, even with concurrency of real-time data ingest and 50K queries per second. Nice.
Watch the demo →

Introducing Hyperscale (Citus) on Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Big news; Citus is now available on Microsoft Azure as Hyperscale (Citus), a new deployment option now in preview on Azure Database for PostgreSQL. This is Craig's overview of the key things to know, that he wrote to support the launch earlier this month.
Find out more →

Welcoming pg_auto_failover: a new open source extension to PostgreSQL

pg_auto_failover is a new, open source extension to Postgres for automated failover. It takes care of keeping your Postgres database available, so you don’t have to. pg_auto_failover is focused on simple, automated failover built on Postgres streaming replication, without any external third-party dependencies.
More about pg_auto_failover →

Managing multiple databases in Rails 6

In the upcoming Rails 6 (currently in RC1), you will be able to easily change which database server you are connecting to, so you can support followers (aka read replicas) and splitting your database into dedicated components. In this post, Lukas explains how to configure automatic queries against read replicas in Rails 6.
Read Lukas’s post →

More technical details on pg_auto_failover

In this post, Dimitri Fontaine, one of the developers of pg_auto_failover, provides more detail on how pg_auto_failover works. When designing pg_auto_failover, our goal was to provide an easy-to-set-up business continuity solution for Postgres that implements fault tolerance of any node in the system.
Read the deets on pg_auto_failover →

What’s happening with Citus and Microsoft Azure?

Hyperscale (Citus) is now available in preview on Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Want to stay in the loop? We’ve made it easy for you. Just sign up to the Citus on Azure interest list.
Sign up on the Citus on Azure interest list →

ICYMI: A health check playbook for your Postgres database

Our Citus team has a lot of experience running and managing Postgres databases. In this post, you’ll find our breakdown of what your regular Postgres health check should look like. Think about running this on a monthly basis to be able to make small tweaks and adjustments and avoid the drastic changes. A santé!
Health check playbook →

Operationalizing your PostgreSQL database health checks using SQL Notebooks

In Craig’s blog post, “A health check playbook for your Postgres database” he emphasizes the need for periodic checks for your Postgres databases to ensure it’s healthy and performing well. Most Postgres users might bookmark or save such articles for easy access when needed. The trouble with this approach is, you end up with many saved archives, and searching through them when you need it is time consuming and less productive. Another way: create SQL Notebooks in Azure Data Studio.
More on SQL Notebooks →

Optimizing your app by understanding your Postgres

In this talk that Samay delivered last month at RailsConf last month, Samay shares the statistics that Postgres captures for you and how you can use these stats to find slow queries, un-used indexes, or tables which are not getting vacuumed correctly. The talk covers Postgres tools and tips for the above, including pg_stat_statements, catalog tables, and Postgres features such as CREATE STATISTICS.
View Samay’s slides →

When it all goes wrong (with Postgres)

Will Leinweber was at RailsConf too. In his talk, you'll learn not only the common Postgres failure cases and how to fix them, but also how to quickly figure out what's wrong in the first place. Since Postgres normally works very well most of the time, you don’t get much practice figuring out what to fix, and even where to start looking. This deck just might help.
View Will’s slides →

Come see these Citans at events in June

Is Citus right for you?

Want to explore whether Citus is right for you and your use case? Learn more about the Citus product, check out the documentation, or let us know if you want to book a demo.