Enterprise-Grade PostgreSQL Operations with Nutanix Database Service

Your PostgreSQL databases are performing well, but are your database operations keeping pace with business demands? If your team spends more time managing infrastructure than optimizing performance, you're not alone.

PostgreSQL's open-source nature provides vendor independence and community-driven innovation, while its extensibility through custom functions, extensions, and data types enables organizations to adapt the database to specific business requirements. However, as PostgreSQL deployments scale across enterprise environments, specific operational challenges emerge: provisioning high availability clusters requires coordinating multiple infrastructure teams and components, backup and recovery strategies demand complex WAL management and custom scripting, and patching operations require careful orchestration during maintenance windows—all of which can significantly limit your ability to realize PostgreSQL's full potential.

The Nutanix Database Service (NDB) DBaaS platform addresses these challenges by transforming PostgreSQL from a database requiring constant attention into a self-managing service, enabling teams to focus on higher value tasks instead of infrastructure.

The Enterprise PostgreSQL Operational Challenge

While PostgreSQL excels in performance and feature richness, managing large fleets of PostgreSQL databases introduces several operational complexities that can strain even experienced database teams:

Infrastructure Provisioning Bottlenecks

Before you can even start building a PostgreSQL HA stack, you need virtual machines, shared storage, and network constructs—each owned by different IT teams. For many enterprises, that means separate tickets for VM capacity, SAN or NAS LUNs, VLANs / firewall rules, and a load-balancer pool. Several weeks can pass before the DBA can begin installing PostgreSQL, turning a simple development cluster request into a complex project.

High Availability Complexity

Manual PostgreSQL high availability setup requires assembling and maintaining a complex stack including Patroni for cluster management, etcd for distributed state storage, HAProxy for query routing, and Keepalived for virtual IP management. This multi-component architecture demands deep expertise and careful coordination. While Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform can automate initial deployment, ongoing operations still demand expertise across all components for monitoring, failover management, patching, and troubleshooting - operational complexity that scales with your database fleet size.

Data Protection Operational Burden

Traditional PostgreSQL backup strategies rely on complex combinations of base backups, continuous WAL file management, storage retention policies, and recovery validation procedures. These implementations typically involve custom scripting, manual testing cycles, and ongoing maintenance that diverts DBA resources from strategic initiatives while introducing risk through configuration inconsistencies.

Patching and Upgrade Risk

PostgreSQL maintenance demands careful orchestration of replica promotion, upgrade execution, and application cutover. These tasks are often scheduled during weekend maintenance windows to minimize business impact, but the manual effort involved still limits agility and adds operational complexity.

Multi-Site Operations

Implementing disaster recovery across regions or data centers requires independently managing replication pipelines, storage snapshots, and application reconfiguration—creating multiple points of failure and operational complexity.

Governance vs. Agility

Organizations must balance rapid developer provisioning needs with centralized access control, audit requirements, encryption and operational consistency—often resulting in lengthy provisioning cycles or security compromises.

How NDB Transforms PostgreSQL Operations

NDB addresses these challenges through automation and policy-driven management, transforming PostgreSQL into an enterprise-ready database service.

Unified Infrastructure and Database Provisioning

NDB is designed to eliminate infrastructure coordination bottlenecks by provisioning complete PostgreSQL environments—including virtual machines, distributed storage volumes, network segmentation, and load balancing—with enterprise best practices and pre-tuned database parameters for optimal performance through unified workflows. The platform automatically:

• Provisions optimized infrastructure with compute, storage, and network resources configured specifically for PostgreSQL workloads using optimized settings for memory allocation, storage I/O, and network throughput
• Implements security controls including network isolation, encryption, and access management from initial deployment
• Establishes backup and recovery capabilities integrated with the underlying storage infrastructure

Automated High Availability

Rather than requiring manual assembly of HA components, NDB deploys production-ready PostgreSQL clusters with enterprise-grade availability characteristics, as shown in Figure 1 below. The platform provides:

• Automated cluster deployment with Patroni, etcd, HAProxy, and Keepalived configured and integrated seamlessly.
• Intelligent failover management through continuous health monitoring and fast automated replica promotion. 
• Workload-aware replication with configurable synchronous or asynchronous modes based on application consistency requirements

Figure 1 : PostgreSQL HA Logical Deployment

 Figure 2 : PostgreSQL HA Deployment in NDB

Continuous Data Protection and Recovery

The NDB Time Machine technology captures application-consistent recovery points at configurable intervals. This approach eliminates the complexity of custom WAL archival scripts while providing enterprise-grade protection through automated log backup catch-up operations.

The NDB platform enables restore and cloning capabilities, allowing administrators to restore databases to specific snapshots or points-in-time, or create clones for development, testing, and analytics environments without storage overhead.

Figure 3 : PostgreSQL HA Cluster with TimeMachine Calendar

Automated Patching and Upgrades

Through software profiles, NDB packages PostgreSQL binaries and associated components, enabling consistency across environments. The platform supports automated minor version upgrades with pre and post-upgrade validation while maintaining service availability.

For organizations requiring bulk patching across multiple databases, NDB provides configurable maintenance windows that enable coordinated upgrade operations at scale. NDB maintains snapshots throughout maintenance operations, enabling rollback capabilities if issues arise during patching processes.

Multi-Cluster Operations

NDB supports PostgreSQL operations across multiple Nutanix clusters, enabling deployment architectures ranging from multi-region, multi-datacenter high availability configurations for mission-critical workloads to single-site deployments for cost-sensitive environments. Organizations can deploy PostgreSQL across hybrid environments—combining on-premises Nutanix infrastructure with Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) platform (NC2) deployments in Azure and AWS—while maintaining unified management and operations.

The platform supports cross-cluster replication and clone operations across different locations, allowing PostgreSQL high availability clusters to span multiple data centers or cloud regions. NDB provides data access management policies that enable consistent database operations across these distributed infrastructure environment.

Enterprise Integration and Security

NDB provides role-based access control and integrates with enterprise identity systems. SSL/TLS encryption is supported for PostgreSQL connections, with certificate management capabilities. For organizations with advanced security requirements, NDB supports encryption with Thales as an external Key Management System (KMS), enabling centralized cryptographic key lifecycle management and compliance with enterprise security policies.

The Kubernetes^® operator enables organizations to provision and manage PostgreSQL databases directly through Kubernetes APIs, integrating database lifecycle management into containerized application workflows.

Architectural Benefits

The underlying architecture of NDB provides specific advantages for PostgreSQL workloads:

• Distributed storage architecture optimizes data placement and access patterns
• Snapshot-based operations enable space and time efficient backup and clone creation
• Centralized management provides consistent operations across database fleets
• Policy-driven automation helps maintain configuration consistency

Operational Benefits

Organizations implementing PostgreSQL with NDB achieve significant operational benefits. Wells Fargo, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, reported a 1000% improvement in read/write I/O performance on its NDB platform. They were able to take a snapshot of a 40TB database in about two minutes and recover it in just eight minutes — a dramatic boost in resilience and agility.  Watch video

IG Group, a global leader in online trading platforms, transformed its database operations by adopting NDB. By leveraging NDB’s automation, self-service capabilities, and unified platform for on-prem and cloud environments, IG Group enabled its developers to spin up databases in minutes instead of weeks—without relying on DBAs or manual intervention. Read more

These are just two examples of how leading enterprises are transforming their database operations with NDB. From global banks to digital-first innovators, organizations across industries are using NDB to simplify operations, boost resilience, and accelerate innovation. Explore more customer stories here

Enterprise Readiness

NDB supports PostgreSQL deployments from single instances to enterprise-grade highly available clusters, with the flexibility to operate multiple databases across different sites and regions. The platform provides the operational consistency and automation capabilities required for modern enterprise database environments.

The power of PostgreSQL as an enterprise database is undeniable, but operational complexity shouldn't limit your organization's ability to leverage it effectively. NDB transforms PostgreSQL from a high-maintenance database into a self-managing service, enabling your teams to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure.

Ready to streamline your PostgreSQL operations?

We strongly recommend that you start small and then scale. Begin with a pilot deployment for dev/test workloads before expanding to production

The first step should be for you to experience NDB firsthand: Try our hands-on Test Drive to see PostgreSQL provisioning, HA setup, and automated patching in action

The question isn't whether your organization needs better PostgreSQL operations—it's how quickly you can implement them. Contact our team to discuss your specific PostgreSQL challenges and discover how NDB can transform your database operations.

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