Blog Archives - Stormatics

PostgreSQL Bloat and VACUUM 101: A Beginner’s Guide

Why does a PostgreSQL table grow when the row count stays the same? This beginner’s guide uses pageinspect to show how MVCC and dead tuples cause table bloat.

Your backups are green. That does not mean you can restore.

Your backup dashboard is green, but has anyone ever brought a backup back? Here is why a successful backup job is a much smaller claim than people think, and the one test that proves you can recover.

Your app does not need PostgreSQL superuser

A PostgreSQL superuser can read any file on the server, write to it, and run shell commands on the host. Here is why your app does not need it, and how to scope any tool or agent down.

PostgreSQL 18 and libnuma

PostgreSQL 18 can be built with libnuma support. Part 3 of our NUMA series explains what Tomas Vondra's patch set changes and which tuning advice still applies.

How to Backfill Compressed TimescaleDB Chunks Without Running Out of Disk

A narrow backfill into compressed TimescaleDB chunks can still decompress far more data than expected. This workflow keeps every batch bounded, vacuumed, and recompressed.

The Database Restarted Without Restarting: The Basics of PostgreSQL Signals (Part 1)

Signal 1 should only reload PostgreSQL's config, so why did it trigger crash recovery? Part 1 covers PostgreSQL signals and the postmaster.

Migrating a Patroni Cluster Without Losing an In-Flight Update: A Logical Replication Story (Part 1)

Part 1 of a live Patroni-to-EFM migration: how a trigger-based capture table closes a silent data-loss race, and how low-cost PostgreSQL logical replication monitoring tracks drift between source and target.

Your Postgres Database Is Slow, and It Isn’t Postgres

When every PostgreSQL setting is right and reads are still slow, look at the storage underneath. Four Azure disk traps, from the 4 TiB caching cliff to VM I/O caps, and how to spot them.

Partitioning Four PostgreSQL Tables at Scale, Without a One-Size-Fits-All Answer

Four production tables, two very different partitioning strategies. See how real dependency and skew data, not convention, shaped a zero-downtime migration, and the two silent bugs caught before they ever reached production.

How to De-Risk a Mission-Critical PostgreSQL Migration

Speed is the wrong finish line for a mission-critical PostgreSQL migration. This field-tested method covers defining success in numbers, validating data at three checkpoints, rehearsing against a production copy, following a runbook, and keeping a rollback path open until sign-off.

PostgreSQL Bloat and VACUUM 101: A Beginner’s Guide

Your backups are green. That does not mean you can restore.

Your app does not need PostgreSQL superuser

PostgreSQL 18 and libnuma

How to Backfill Compressed TimescaleDB Chunks Without Running Out of Disk

The Database Restarted Without Restarting: The Basics of PostgreSQL Signals (Part 1)

Migrating a Patroni Cluster Without Losing an In-Flight Update: A Logical Replication Story (Part 1)

Your Postgres Database Is Slow, and It Isn’t Postgres

Partitioning Four PostgreSQL Tables at Scale, Without a One-Size-Fits-All Answer

How to De-Risk a Mission-Critical PostgreSQL Migration

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