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

A health check playbook for your Postgres database

After years of running and managing literally millions of Postgres databases, here’s our breakdown of what your regular Postgres health check should look like. Consider running this on a monthly basis to be able to make small tweaks and adjustments and avoid the drastic changes. To the health of your database!
Health check playbook →

Postgres and super user access

In this post, Craig reviews a few principles and concepts about how Postgres works, most notably super user access. As super user you can perform all types of powerful operations. Some of these operations may touch the underlying system itself; others may enable extensions which allow for low level system access, so special care is needed. But you knew that. ;-)
More about super user access →

Citus is coming very soon to Azure

Want to know what’s happening with Citus on Azure? Well our engineering team has been hard at work and it’s coming quite soon. And we’ve made it easy for you to sign up to the Citus on Azure interest list, so you can stay in the loop, as things happen.
Join the Citus on Azure interest list →

Postgres data types you should consider using

You probably already use the basic Postgres data types, such as integers and text, but did you know that PostgreSQL has nearly 100 different data types? These data types can come with their own tuned indexing or their own specialized functions. In this post, we’ll take a survey of less-used but incredibly powerful PostgreSQL data types.
Lots of Postgres data types →

How Pex powers ultra-fast content search

We checked in with Rasty Turek, founder & CEO of Pex a year after our original interview. My how Pex has grown. Read their story to find out how and why Pex chose Citus to scale out Postgres in the cloud. Pex performs analytics on multimedia content across multiple platforms, and that requires some heavy lifting within Pex’s technology stack. Citus met Pex’s need for faster better analytics, massive scale, and database ops without the worry.
Read on for more on Pex →

4 options for scaling from 1 to 100,000 tenants

In this post Craig reviews the trade-offs and benefits of different approaches to scaling your app. Maybe this sounds like your SaaS application. Your database is performing well at 100 tenants (tenants = customers). Your back of the napkin math says you’ll be able to scale your app up to 1,000 tenants, but after that you know you’re going to have to explore some different options to scale. Here’s a head start on your research.
More on options for scaling →

When Postgres blocks: 7 tips for dealing with locks

In this post, Marco Slot shares some useful tips for dealing with Postgres locks. You’ll find some of the important do’s and don’ts that we’ve discovered when working with users to migrate from their single node Postgres database to Citus or when building new real-time analytics apps on Citus.
Read the 7 tips from Marco →

ICYMI: How to evaluate your next database

Here’s a checklist for choosing a database, something you don't do every day. You generally choose it once for a project, then don’t look back. In choosing a database there are a few key things to consider. Surprise surprise, Postgres checks out strongly in each of these categories. :-)
Database evaluation checklist →

Citus database people giving talks in May

And even more event goodness

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.