Episode

Future-proof Postgres for better performance and scale

with Scott Hanselman, Paula Berenguel

Azure Friday

See how a single Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server scales read-heavy workloads using read replicas and virtual endpoints — the same pattern OpenAI relies on to run ChatGPT on Postgres. Scott and Paula show a live read workload saturating a primary, then offload it to a replica with a single hostname change, and finish with replicas across Europe staying within milliseconds of the primary. It's read scale-out without sharding or re-architecting your app.

Chapters

  • 00:30 - Introduction
  • 01:55 - Why read replicas: read/write asymmetry
  • 03:45 - Architecture: primary, replicas, and virtual endpoints
  • 05:30 - Demo: the cluster and a read-only replica
  • 10:28 - Baseline: saturating the primary
  • 13:53 - The flip: offloading reads to a replica
  • 16:48 - Wrap up

Connect

Azure

Have feedback? Submit an issue here.