Tales from the Postgres Front - and What We Can Learn
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Studying when and why PostgreSQL users – even veteran pros – call us for help can go a long way toward educating the community on emerging skill sets and rising demand for specific kinds of expertise. This presentation was delivered by Marc Linster, Senior Vice President, Products and Services at EnterpriseDB. He explains why database pros should make friends in the worlds of operating systems and storage area networks, why their knowledge of Linux should extend beyond Red Hat, and why they need to learn more than a few tuning tips. Mining the support ticket database of EnterpriseDB, a major Postgres software and services provider, gives great insight into what DBAs need to know and what awaits if they don’t heed the advice.
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Tales from the Postgres Front - and What We Can Learn
- 1. Tales from the Postgres Front Marc Linster | September 2014 © 2013 EDB All rights reserved. 1
- 2. Agenda • EnterpriseDB Overview (quick) • Migrations • Postgres Support Experiences • Health Checks Why are we doing this? − Share some of our metrics with the community − Learn how to resolve customer problems faster − Drive our product strategy to make customer problems go away © 2013 EDB All rights reserved. 2
- 3. Postgres Plus Advanced Server Postgres Plus Management Performance © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 3 Cloud Database High Availability REMOTE DBA 24x7 SUPPORT PROFESSIONAL SERVICES TRAINING EDB Serves All Your Postgres Needs PostgreSQL Security
- 4. POSTGRES innovation Services & training © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 4 ENTERPRISE reliability 24/7 support Enterprise-class features & tools Indemnification Product road-map Control Thousands of developers Fast development cycles Low cost No vendor lock-in Advanced features Enabling commercial adoption of Postgres
- 5. Migrations © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 5
- 6. Migrations • Majority of interest for migrations from Oracle, followed by MS SQL, DB2 (few) and MySQL (rare) • Rapid increase in interest from MS SQL Server in 2014 • Obstacles − Missing language equivalents (e.g., autonomous_transaction, merge) − Scalability (vertical and RAC-like) − Need additional constructs in compatibility layer (EDB proprietary 10th generation) • Greatly facilitated by Object Relational Frameworks, such as Hibernate – great indicator for easy migration to Postgres • Experience shows that 70%+ of migrations can be executed quickly and result in comparable performance © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 6
- 7. Postgres Support Experiences © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 7
- 8. Why Analyze Support Tickets • Adoption of Postgres is growing fast − More and more Postgres users are not not ‘dyed in the wool’ Postgres users – they come from Oracle, MS SQL, DB2, etc. • Postgres is moving into more complex and more mission-critical applications − Question patterns are changing from simple to complex − Expertise level is changing – when the customer calls, it is with a (more) difficult problem or urgent issue • How do we make Postgres users even more successful? − Targeted white papers & how-to instructions focused on non-Postgres users − Pro-active training for users as part of our customer enablement process − Balanced product strategy of new features, new capabilities and usability © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 8
- 9. Ticket Volumes & Multi Year Growth • Q1 2014: ~ 2500 total customers • Analysis in this presentation is based on a representative sample of tickets raised over a 12 months period © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 9
- 10. Tickets and Platforms Observations • Postgres Plus Advanced Server: Strong emphasis on proprietary or commercially supported OSS • PostgreSQL: Significantly less emphasis on proprietary or commercially supported OSS – even though the customer has commercially supported Postgres Distribution © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 10 77% Linux
- 11. When do customers call? © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 11
- 12. What Do Customers Call About 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% What are customers calling about? POC Dev Deployment Maintenance © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 12 Tuning Product Awareness How to Enhancements Corruption Bug # Tickets Phase Category POC Dev Deployment Maintenance Grand Total Bug 8% 22% 9% 7% 10% Corruption 0% 0% 0% 6% 2% Enhancements 3% 4% 1% 0% 1% How to 41% 33% 41% 29% 35% Product Awareness 46% 39% 44% 39% 41% Tuning 3% 2% 5% 19% 10% Grand Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
- 13. Where Do Users Need Help # Tickets Phase Category POC Dev Deployment Maintenance Grand Total Connectors 0% 2% 1% 0% 3% Bug 0% 0% 0% 0% 1% How to 0% 1% 0% 0% 1% Product Awareness 0% 1% 0% 0% 1% Database 10% 9% 17% 37% 73% Bug 1% 2% 1% 2% 6% Corruption 0% 0% 0% 2% 2% Enhancements 0% 0% 0% 0% 1% How to 4% 3% 6% 10% 23% Product Awareness 4% 3% 8% 15% 31% Tuning 0% 0% 1% 7% 9% Replication 1% 4% 4% 2% 12% Bug 0% 1% 0% 0% 2% How to 0% 0% 3% 1% 4% Product Awareness 1% 2% 1% 0% 4% Tuning 0% 0% 0% 1% 1% Utilities 1% 3% 6% 3% 12% Bug 0% 1% 1% 0% 2% Enhancements 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% How to 1% 1% 3% 1% 6% Product Awareness 0% 1% 3% 1% 5% Grand Total 12% 17% 28% 42% 100% © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 13
- 14. Select Top questions (not in rank order) • Deployment/Database/Product Awareness & How To − How to set up connection pooling? − How to set up Hot Standby and Streaming Replica? − How to add table spaces? − How to partition? − How to upgrade from major version? • Maintenance/Database/Product Awareness & How To − How to find bloat in tables & indexes? − How to enable auditing selectively without performance impact? − What are the effects of changes to the values of postgresql.conf file parameters wal_writer_delay, bgwriter_delay? − What is the correct configuration of hba_conf? © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 14
- 15. Lessons Learned from the AHC © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 15
- 16. Architectural Health Check • Systematic top-to-bottom review of the customer’s Postgres production installation • Identifies issues and improvement opportunities in: − Security − Performance − Backups − Replication − Maintenance − Upgrades • The following analysis is based on a set of 20 AHCs executed in 2013 © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 16
- 17. 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% effec ve_cache_size Top Database Parameter Adjustments - Ordered by Frequency wal_buffers maintenance_work_mem shared_buffers bgwriter_lru_maxpages work_mem random_page_cost checkpoint_segments bgwriter_lru_mul plier cpu_tuple_cost checkpoint_comple on_target checkpoint_ meout © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 17 Red bars: experts expected top parameters, including vacuum_cost_limit, log_line_prefix, log_min_duration_statement, log_checkpoints checkpoint_warning autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay autovacuum_vacuum_threshold prefix waitsstatement factor line_lock_scale_log_log_dura vacuum_on_log_autovacuum_min_autovacuum_nap me log_autovacuum_min_dura on
- 18. Kernel Parameters 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 18
- 19. Postgres Platform Distribution PostgreSQL, © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 19 17 Postgres Plus Advanced Server, 3 Postgres Plus Cloud Database, 1
- 20. Backup and Standby Snapshot 7% Backup Approach © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 20 Standby Approach hot 47% None 18% cold 12% warm 23% Physical Only 36% Logical Only 29% FS Physical and Logical 14% None 14% 43% of customers could not execute PITR (prior to AHC) – some had NO backup in place 30% of customers would have been slow or unable to recover from failure
- 21. Maintenance Tasks Missing Indexes Bloated Tables © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 21 Unused Indexes 39% Bloated Indexes 30% 13% 9% Missing PK 9% Bloat management continues to be a problem
- 22. Observations from the AHCs • Windows was less prevalent (10%) than indicated in support tickets – may be due to a focus on Windows for development versus production • Most DBAs do not appear to be familiar enough with the storage system/SAN, and the DAS/SAN/Fiber channel/iSCSI/NFS decisions • OS System Adjustments (dirty_background_ratio & dirty_ratio) are also a major adjustment (70% & 45%) – indicating the need for more cooperation between DBAs and Sys Admins • Customers would benefit from targeted education about Postgres-specific OS parameters and storage system/SAN guidance © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 22
- 23. Summary • The analysis helped us understand where we need to collect more data during our support interactions to better pinpoint problem trends and drive knowledge base development • This will drive our product development and feature prioritization so that we can make customer problems go away © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 23
- 24. Thank you • Many EDB Team Members contributed to this analysis − Thom Brown − Deepanshu Sharma − Robert Haas − Kevin Grittner − Gabrielle Roth • Contact − Marc Linster [email protected] +1 (617) 306 6059 © 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. 24
Editor's Notes
- #2: This PowerPoint Template includes a series of slide masters with predefined layouts and color schemes for formatting slides Slide Masters are displayed when you right click on a slide and select Layout from menu
- #4: Overview of EDB products & Services NOTE: THIS SLIDE HAS BUILT-IN “JUMPING” SO YOU CAN CLICK ON ANY ICON TO DRILL DOWN THEN RETURN TO THE OVERVIEW; here’s how: Click on each icon (DBs and services) to drill down to details Once on detail page, click on the icon to move directly to the next icon detail, or Click on the area outside of the drill down detail to return back to the main product & services overview Main message: EDB is the BEST source for all your Postgres needs: EDB is a database internals product development company EDB creates add-on features, tools and cloud capabilities designed for enterprise-class workloads EDB’s deep technical expertise makes it your best source for support and professional services Sample script: “Just as you’d expect from any enterprise software company, EDB provides various products and services to ensure our customers make the most out of their Postgres deployments. From our standard edition which includes support for the open source PostgreSQL to PPAS and PPCD, we have the right database for your application. We back that up with global follow the sun support, packaged services and training along with RDBA services. Many of customers run PostgreSQL and come to us for support and to take advantage of our add-on functionality, such as PEM and xDB replication server. For lots of workloads this is a fine solution. The majority of our customers do run PPAS, though. The combination of its low cost--$6,900 per year per socket, along with a ton of additional features and functionality above the Standard Edition, it’s a great fit for workloads with lots of concurrent users and lots of transactions. Of course, PPCD gives customers the ability to run either PostgreSQL or PPAS, but in a cloud environment.”
- #5: EDB provides enterprises and government agencies with the commercial support and reliability needed to take full advantage of open-source Postgres innovation and cost benefits: 24/7 Support Enterprise-class features & tools Packaged and professional services Wide array of classroom and on-demand training Clear visibility & influence over product road-map EDB gives you the responsiveness & dependability you need to be successful