Pushing past PostgreSQL’s vertical scaling limits - Running Amazon RDS
summary
Amazon RDS runs the core metadata Postgres instances at hundreds of thousands TPS and hits vertical limits, so teams use sharding, read replicas, caching, partitioning and autovacuum plus tools like RDS Performance Insights and pg_stat_statements to find hot queries. Major upgrades use the RDS snapshot (instacart) logical replication flow with frozen validation replicas and a dedicated dump replica for maintenance. Operational fixes include connection limits, circuit breakers, simple SQLs, timed query kills, and a surprising predicted 10–12% CPU win that yielded a 133% CPU decrease after upgrade.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (6)
- 0:00Introduction and background
- 8:33Performance management overview
- 19:53Major version upgrades
- 26:23Connection and query management
- 33:51Wish list for PostgreSQL
- 38:26Q&A and closing








