Nick Meyer studied physics and computer science at Caltech, and is currently a Staff Software Engineer on the Platform Engineering team at Academia.edu. A major focus during his tenure at Academia.edu has been streamlining and modernizing the data layer, in particular projects around operations of Academia.edu's PostgreSQL clusters, including upgrades, partitioning, and backup tooling.

Presentations

22x

9.2 to 15 and beyond

Some signs that you may want to think about upgrading postgres:

  • You have to click on the “Unsupported versions” row to double check everything you read in the docs
  • You hear about a feature that has been around since postgres 11 (or 9.3) and wish that you were able to use it
  • Whenever you mention the version you are running, people mention how out of date it is

It can be hard to find answers when things get tricky. I may not have all of those answers, but I want you at least to know that you are not alone.

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21x

Testing your PostgreSQL backups: a practical guide

It is often said that "an untested backup is not a backup" but how can we turn that saying into something more actionable? And in an organization with limited engineering bandwidth, what are the most important action items to prioritize?

In this presentation, I aim to provide a practical guide on what I believe will give the greatest "bang for buck" with backup testing, and how to fold it into your operations, modeled after how we test our PostgreSQL backups at Academia.edu.

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