FAST is previewing its latest Postgres high availability initiative, HiAv Solution for Postgres at OpenCeBIT in Sydney, Australia on May 20^th, 21^st and 22^nd. HiAv solution features easily administered Switchover, Failover, Load Balancing and Monitoring capabilities for an Enterprise-grade high availability and disaster recovery Postgres system.

Over time, many businesses progress from initially using Postgres with new or non-critical applications to a more full-blooded adoption of it as a key strategic element of their IT infrastructure. In some instances, the original plan was to transition from Postgres to a 'brand-name' as soon as the application's worth to the business is clear and established – putting it on a more 'solid footing' so to speak. At FAST we meet businesses facing this scenario from time to time, and it is almost always the case that, when the moment comes, there is no reasonable business justification to migrate away from Postgres. Because it just works, and because it scales, and because the cost of migration can't quite justify the required licence-cost inflated capital expenditure, Postgres stays put.

As the strategic importance of Postgres grows, businesses are increasing their investment in it and using it in ever more complex ways. This is not surprising, as in many ways, having a top tier database with no-fuss no-cost licencing benefits can equate to a real business advantage in a tight margin competitive sector.

With Postgres firmly established within the organisation, extending its footprint to include high availability and disaster recovery support systems are logical steps. This is a hot topic with large numbers of Postgres users right now. The number of solutions available is increasing all the time. At FAST, in our dealings with our customers to date, we have primarily focussed on a Slony I-based approach. As well as being proven and reliable, it has been the most suitable approach for the majority of our customers. Our confidence in Slony I has been behind our decision to use it at the heart of our launch version of HiAv Solution for Postgres. Other products such as those offered by Continuent and recent open sourced capabilities produced by the team at Skype also show promise and, if feasible, may form part of the HiAv Solution for Postgres toolkit in the future. In the case of our customers, our approach will always be to endeavour to pick the best tool for the job.

The FSP team will be available at the OpenCeBIT exhibition in Sydney from May 20^th. to May 22^nd 2008 to discuss HiAv Solution for Postgres with visitors to the booth. Regular demos will be provided throughout each day.

The main thrust of the FSP team at Fujitsu Australia Software Technology (FAST) is to promote PostgreSQL for business use. I have yet to meet someone who doubts PostgreSQL’s enterprise pedigree – that is, it’s ability to perform cost-effectively as a major component of a mid to large sized organisation’s most critical business IT system. This is the ‘acid test’ for a business owner (or the responsible CIO) and arguments about TCO, licencing or even open source itself may be less of a consideration.

As an enterprise-grade database, one would expect PostgreSQL’s performance on an enterprise architecture such as Itanium to be impressive. The FSP team here in Sydney Australia have carried out some preliminary benchmarking of PostgreSQL on a Fujitsu Primequest 520 (Itanium 2) system. The results to date point to this combination as being an outstanding Enterprise-grade infrastructural solution.

The FSP team will be available at the OpenCeBIT (www.opencebit.com.au) exhibition in Sydney from May 1^st to May 3^rd to discuss PostgreSQL on Itanium with visitors to the booth. A full-featured Fujitsu Primequest (Itanium) system will be on display, and demonstrations of it’s capabilities can be provided on request.

Gavin Sherry is Australia's leading PostgreSQL expert, and a prominent PostgreSQL community member.

Gavin recently gave an enlightening tech talk on the internals of PostgreSQL, in which he discussed functionality such as Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) in great detail, and explored various other issues which may be of relevance to PostgreSQL DBAs everywhere.

We're pleased to provide the first video in this four part series to the community in order to disseminate Gavin's knowledge to all those interested.

The video can be viewed here.

I have been involved with the Fujitsu Supported PostgreSQL programme since its inception just over 2 years ago. Fujitsu’s PostgreSQL interests and activities however go back further than that and in total the organisation has embraced PostgreSQL for more than three years.

Why is Fujitsu fascinated with PostgreSQL? Probably because of the organisation’s great history of technical innovation and scientific pedigree which mirrors that of PostgreSQL and it’s supporting community. PostgreSQL is a good fit for Fujitsu and vice versa.

Though it may seem strange to draw parallels between a commercial organisation with business ambitions and an open source community, the common thread of building great technology and the excitement surrounding that, unites our respective groups.

As Product Manager for Open Source Systems at FAST (Fujitsu Australia Software Technology) my primary goal for PostgreSQL is to present it to the business world as a viable cost-effective option at the heart of their IT infrastructure. This presents challenges as this has probably never been the primary objective or concern of the PostgreSQL community, but over the past number of years, we have met that challenge very successfully to the point that now, we can confidently claim that ‘Everything you get from a branded proprietary database solution, you get from Fujitsu Supported PostgreSQL, and more’.