Zero-downtime Postgres major upgrades

Physical2logical + PAUSE/RESUME technique for true zero-downtime, reversible, zero-data-loss Postgres major version upgrades. Battle-tested on mission-critical clusters with dozens of terabytes of data and 100,000s TPS.

Three critical guarantees​

Our solution delivers all three essential characteristics for enterprise-grade major upgrades for Postgres:

– ⚡️ Zero downtime – 🔄 Reversible – ✅ Zero data loss (in both directions)

The problem​

Traditional Postgres major version upgrades require:

– Hours of downtime for multi-terabyte databases if you want to properly test things (otherwise, operations like ANALYZE can take significant time and are not automated) – Complete database shutdown during pg_upgrade
– Irreversible process – no easy way back if issues arise – Hard to test and verify procedures for various issues like incompatibilities – Risks of plan flips and performance regressions after upgrade

Our solution: Four-component approach​

A complete system:

– Reliable, safe, battle-proven physical2logical conversion technique for zero data loss – PgBouncer's PAUSE/RESUME for true zero-downtime connection management – Reverse replication enabling full reversibility – go back if needed with zero data loss – Extensive testing before deployment including for plan flips and compatibility issues

Case studies​

– GitLab's conference talks about their zero-downtime upgrade experience – pganalyze technical review of zero-downtime upgrade approaches including our method – Gadget's zero-downtime upgrade of their core production database from Postgres 13 to 15 – More cases (TBD)

Get preview access​

This solution is fully developed and battle-tested. We're offering preview access to select enterprise customers.