POSETTE 2024 is a wrap! 💯 Thanks for joining the fun! Missed it? Watch all 42 talks online 🍿
POSETTE 2024 is a wrap! 💯 Thanks for joining the fun! Missed it? Watch all 42 talks online 🍿
Written by Nik Larin
September 30, 2023
This post by Nik Larin about Postgres 16 availability with Citus on Azure was originally published on the Azure Cosmos DB Blog.
Big news in the Postgres world: PostgreSQL 16 was released just over 2 weeks ago. And today we're announcing that Postgres 16 is generally available for production workloads on Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL. That's right, in production: this announcement is not just a preview of Postgres 16 support.
Whether you need to provision a new distributed Postgres cluster in Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL—or upgrade your existing database clusters—Postgres 16 is now an option for you.
And you can use Azure Portal, Bicep or ARM templates, REST APIs, Azure SDKs, or Azure CLI to spin up a new Postgres 16 cluster in Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL, or to upgrade an existing cluster to Postgres 16.
Giving you access to new capabilities in Postgres is a priority for the Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL team. And because Citus—which powers Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL—is an open source database extension (and not a fork!), it makes it easier for us to keep Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL current with the latest Postgres releases.
A lot of focused engineering work to keep up-to-date with the Postgres 16 beta and RC candidate releases over the last months allowed to bring all Postgres 16 benefits to Citus extension and Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL that fast. In fact, the Citus 12.1 open source release came out with Postgres 16 support just 1 week after the Postgres 16 release.
Of course, making Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL available on the latest versions of Postgres also involves a rigorous QA process, too. Here are some details about the QA and release process published last year for Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL, shortly after Postgres 15 was released.
Highlights of the innovations featured in the PostgreSQL 16 release notes (that many of us are excited about) include:
While some workloads get tangible benefits from the latest Postgres versions, other applications are just fine running on an older PostgreSQL version. Which is why Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL supports all current Postgres versions: Postgres 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and now 16. "All current Postgres versions" means all the PostgreSQL versions that are supported by PostgreSQL community.
And if you run your cluster on PostgreSQL 14 or 15, you also get access to the latest version of the Citus database extension: Citus 12.x.
If you want to give Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL a try, start with the Quickstart or free trial. More links and resources below. Happy hacking!