Re: PostgreSQL survey - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Cesar Massaki Kamiya  wrote:

> 1. Anyone using PostgreSQL for enterprise mission critical system ?

Josh mentioned a few.  I'm aware of others, but don't want to speak
for anything beyond my own experience.  The Wisconsin Court System is
using PostgreSQL for everything from filing appeals to the State
Supreme Court (the court has adopted a rule that the appeal must be
submitted electronically), to case management for the Circuit Courts,
to the daily operation of various court agencies (Board of Bar
Examiners, Office of Lawyer Regulation, etc.).  We have about 3000
directly connected users, dozens of web applications getting millions
of hits per day, and electronic interfaces to many business partners.

We have been very happy with PostgreSQL.  It is faster and more
reliable than the commercial software from which we converted.  It
has more features and requires fewer resources to manage.  Support
from the community (on the mailing lists) is far superior to what we
got under a paid contract with the commercial product.  With open
source, we have been able to "scratch our own itches" by adding
features we needed -- something which is just not possible with most
commercial software.  The new extensions support, and the related
PGXN site, are fantastic.  I haven't seen a down side to PostgreSQL
compared to any other product in any area which matters to our shop.

Frankly, if PostgreSQL and all commercial products cost the same, my
first choice would be PostgreSQL.

> 2. How big are the servers you are running PostgreSQL, Is there
> anyone using more than 32 cores or 256GB memory ?

Our biggest server, which has just gone into production, is 32 cores
with 256GB RAM.  We are able to comfortably support several TB of
databases running tens of millions of database transactions per day
on servers with 16 cores and 128GB RAM.  In benchmarking the latest
development code, containing features targeted for next year's
performance-oriented release, I was seeing over 500,000 tps for a
read-only transaction load and over 30,000 tps for a mixed load
including a lot of updates.  They are not done adding performance
features for the next release, though.  :-)

> 3. What OS you are using to run this mission critical system on
> PostgreSQL ? Linux, Unix ?

We started out running PostgreSQL on Windows, but it didn't make
sense to use an OS which was so much less reliable (at least in our
experience) than the database itself.  We converted it all to Linux.
No regrets there, either.

> 4. Who provides PostgreSQL support ? Do you have any support
> contract with a third party company ? If so, how much is the
> monthly support fee ?

We have a team of four DBAs to support the 200 databases we run,
spread out over 80 locations.  We're able to handle most issues.
Where we need additional help, the community support on the mailing
lists is fantastic.  As Josh mentioned, there are several great
companies offering contract support for those who are more
comfortable with that.

I hope that is of some help.  If you have any questions, just ask.

-Kevin