Lessons from the Support Desk
summary
Argues that releases increase support complexity and shows hard numbers: an installation base with ~half still on Postgres 11 or older and six nodes on 9.6, a user survey of 888 responses, and recommendation to test upgrades from at least five maintained majors. Calls for detailed release notes, a software bill of materials, clear compatibility matrices, and multiple upgrade/recovery paths. Warns no one upgrades quickly, urges teams to practice restores regularly and to spend a week doing frontline support to see real user pain.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction and speaker background
- 2:34Development vs support perspective
- 7:08Surface area vs volume concept
- 13:33Why users don't upgrade
- 18:15Road maps and version clarity
- 22:30Downtime expectations and recovery
- 26:44Backup and restore testing
- 32:08Understanding your users
- 42:33AI's role in support
- 44:40Q&A and closing remarks
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