Postgres FM

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**Postgres FM**

A weekly podcast about all things PostgreSQL

Latest Episodes:

pgBackRest Jul 03, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael are joined by David Steele to talk all things pgBackRest.
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

David Steele https://postgres.fm/people/david-steele
pgBackRest https://pgbackrest.org
pg_basebackup https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgbasebackup.html
Barman https://pgbarman.org
pgmoneta https://github.com/pgmoneta/pgmoneta
WAL-G https://github.com/wal-g/wal-g
Return pg_control from pg_backup_stop (patch proposal) https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/86436ff9-eb98-4c8a-825e-3bcae022107b%40pgbackrest.org#e36e2ad2f410d1a9a1152e36aa66bb48
Add StorageReadMulti for prefetched multi-file/range reads from object stores (pgBackRest change that needs review) https://github.com/pgbackrest/pgbackrest/pull/2783
pg_hardstorage https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/pg_hardstorage
Why the cycle of open-source sustainability needs to be virtuous (blog post by Gabriele Bartolini) https://www.gabrielebartolini.it/articles/2026/04/why-the-cycle-of-open-source-sustainability-needs-to-be-virtuous
ARIN https://www.arin.net
Stefan Fercot https://pgstef.github.io/about
pgBackRest sponsors at the time of recording: AWS, Supabase, pgEdge, Tiger Data, Percona, Eon, Xata, Dalibo, Data Egret

~~~

00:00 – Intro & pgBackRest origin story
03:07 – Could pgBackRest live in Postgres core? Why it hasn't happened
11:37 – Primary vs. standby backups & corruption safety
20:36 – Measuring RPO & RTO in practice
26:20 – Checksum performance & S3 storage class tips
30:02 – Standby replay bottleneck
35:12 – Log shipping, streaming replication, and sharding
44:56 – Maintenance reality & the sponsorship crisis
47:41 – What's next: repo-to-repo backup & RPO-zero streaming
56:00 – Incremental backup
1:05:01 – Reliability philosophy
1:10:05 – Second maintainer, community growth & wrap-up

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

autovacuum May 29, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael discuss autovacuum, including what it does, and the basics of why and how to tune it.
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

autovacuum https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/routine-vacuuming.html#AUTOVACUUM
autovacuum configuration parameters https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-vacuum.html#RUNTIME-CONFIG-AUTOVACUUM
What’s Missing in Postgres? (our episode with Bruce Momjian) https://postgres.fm/episodes/what-s-missing-in-postgres
pg_squeeze (our episode with Antonín Houska) https://postgres.fm/episodes/pg_squeeze
My queries to monitor autovacuum (post by Laurenz Albe) https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/monitor-autovacuum-my-queries/
Autovacuum Tuning Basics (post by Tomas Vondra, originally for 2nd Quadrant blog) https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/autovacuum-tuning-basics
Zero autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay, Write Storms, and You (post by Jeremy Schneider) https://ardentperf.com/2026/04/12/zero-autovacuum_cost_delay-write-storms-and-you/
Our episode on long-running transactions / xmin horizon https://postgres.fm/episodes/long-running-transactions

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

pg_flight_recorder May 15, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael are joined by David Ventimiglia to discuss pg_flight_recorder, a new tool he created for monitoring a Postgres database from within.
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

David Ventimiglia https://postgres.fm/people/david-ventimiglia
pg_flight_recorder https://github.com/dventimisupabase/pg_flight_recorder
Supabase https://supabase.com
pg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_sampling
pg_ash https://github.com/NikolayS/pg_ash
pg_cron https://github.com/citusdata/pg_cron
pg_tle https://github.com/aws/pg_tle

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

PgQue May 08, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael discuss Nik's new project PgQue, a descendent of Skype's PgQ, for running queue-like workloads in Postgres.
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

Our first episode on Queues in Postgres https://postgres.fm/episodes/queues-in-postgres
PgQue https://github.com/NikolayS/pgque
HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47817349
PgQ https://github.com/pgq/pgq
pgmq https://github.com/pgmq/pgmq
River https://riverqueue.com
Keeping a Postgres queue healthy (blog post by Simeon Griggs / PlanetScale) https://planetscale.com/blog/keeping-a-postgres-queue-healthy
Postgres Job Queues & Failure By MVCC (blog post by Brandur) https://brandur.org/postgres-queues
My queries to monitor autovacuum (blog post by Laurenz Albe) https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/monitor-autovacuum-my-queries/
SELECT FOR UPDATE considered harmful (blog post by Laurenz Albe) https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/select-for-update-considered-harmful-postgresql/
Christophe Pettus blog post https://thebuild.com/blog/2026/05/03/pgque-two-snapshots-and-a-diff
Our episode on pg_ash https://postgres.fm/episodes/pg_ash
Rediscovering PgQ (Alexander Kukushkin slides) https://speakerdeck.com/cyberdemn/rediscovering-pgq
Tick frequency tuning https://github.com/NikolayS/PgQue/blob/main/docs/tick-frequency.md

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

pg_wait_tracer Apr 24, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael are joined by Dmitry Fomin to discuss his new tool pg_wait_tracer, as well as changes that could be made to core to allow wait event tracing with lower overhead, and on managed services.
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

Dmitry Fomin https://postgres.fm/people/dmitry-fomin
pg_wait_tracer https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/pg_wait_tracer
pg_wait_sampling https://github.com/postgrespro/pg_wait_sampling
pg_10046 https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/pg_10046
Jeremy Schneider reply on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7414966981847748608
RDS for PostgreSQL wait event docs https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/PostgreSQL.Tuning.concepts.summary.html
Custom wait events for extensions (added in PostgreSQL 17) https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/xfunc-c.html#XFUNC-ADDIN-WAIT-EVENTS
Hacking Postgres with Dmitry, Kirk, and Nik (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gtuc2lnnsE
Hacking Postgres with Dmitry, Kirk, and Nik (Part 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kqpjnpl5Gc
Tanel Poder https://tanelpoder.com/about/
USDT static tracepoints for wait event tracing (proof of concept by Nik) https://github.com/NikolayS/postgres/pull/18
Add wait_event_timing: Oracle-style wait event instrumentation (patch by Dmitry) https://github.com/DmitryNFomin/postgres/pull/1
PgQue benchmarks https://github.com/NikolayS/pgque/blob/main/docs/benchmarks.md
The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis Techniques for Experimental Design, Measurement, Simulation and Modeling (by Raj K. Jain) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259310412_The_Art_of_Computer_Systems_Performance_Analysis_Techniques_For_Experimental_Design_Measurement_Simulation_and_Modeling_NY_Wiley
Performance modeling and design of computer systems queueing theory in action (by Prof. Mor Harchol-Balter) https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/PerformanceModeling/book.html
Oracle Performance Firefighting (by Craig_Shallahamer) https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780984102303/Oracle-Performance-Firefighting-Craig-Shallahamer-0984102302/plp
Process Mining: Data Science in Action (by Wil van der Aalst) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-49851-4

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Schema design checklist Apr 17, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael discuss a list of things to check when designing new schema in Postgres.
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

Use BIGINT in Postgres (blog post by Ryan Lambert) https://blog.rustprooflabs.com/2021/06/postgres-bigint-by-default
Postgres 18 and UUIDv7 (blog post by Gwen Shapira) https://www.thenile.dev/blog/uuidv7
How to use UUID (how-to guide by Nik) https://postgres.ai/docs/postgres-howtos/schema-design/data-types/how-to-use-uuid
Our episode on constraints https://postgres.fm/episodes/constraints
Our episode on NULLs https://postgres.fm/episodes/nulls-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-and-the-unknown
MultiXact member space exhaustion episode (with Metronome) https://postgres.fm/episodes/multixact-member-space-exhaustion
Our Column Tetris episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/column-tetris
Saving Space Basically for Free (blog post by James Coleman from Braintree) https://medium.com/paypal-tech/postgresql-at-scale-saving-space-basically-for-free-d94483d9ed9a
Over-indexing episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/over-indexing
Under-indexing episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/under-indexing
Gadget's use of Postgres https://postgres.fm/episodes/gadgets-use-of-postgres
Partitioning episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/partitioning
RLS vs performance episode https://postgres.fm/episodes/rls-vs-performance

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

What’s Missing in Postgres? Apr 03, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael are joined by Bruce Momjian to discuss his new talk "What’s Missing in Postgres?"
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

Bruce Momjian https://postgres.fm/people/bruce-momjian
EDB https://www.enterprisedb.com
What’s Missing in Postgres? (Bruce’s slides) https://momjian.us/main/writings/pgsql/missing.pdf
The Wonderful World of WAL (Bruce’s slides) https://momjian.us/main/writings/pgsql/wal.pdf
Getting started with benchmarking (our episode with Melanie Plageman) https://postgres.fm/episodes/getting-started-with-benchmarking
Myths and Truths about Synchronous Replication in Postgres (talk by Alexander Kukushkin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFn9qRGzTMc
The Future of Postgres Sharding (Bruce’s slides) https://momjian.us/main/writings/pgsql/sharding.pdf
MultiXact member space exhaustion https://postgres.fm/episodes/multixact-member-space-exhaustion

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Long-running transactions Mar 27, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael discuss long-running transactions, including when they're harmless, when they cause issues, and how to mitigate those issues.
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

transaction_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-TRANSACTION-TIMEOUT
Our episode on transaction_timeout https://postgres.fm/episodes/transaction_timeout
Our episode on slow queries (which was also our first ever episode!) https://postgres.fm/episodes/slow-queries-and-slow-transactions
Our episode on locks https://postgres.fm/episodes/locks
lock_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-LOCK-TIMEOUT
Transaction Isolation levels https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/transaction-iso.html
pg_current_xact_id_if_assigned() https://pgpedia.info/p/pg_current_xact_id_if_assigned.html
Monitor xmin horizon to prevent XID/MultiXID wraparound and high bloat (how-to guide by Nik) https://postgres.ai/docs/postgres-howtos/performance-optimization/monitoring/how-to-monitor-xmin-horizon
idle_replication_slot_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-replication.html#GUC-IDLE-REPLICATION-SLOT-TIMEOUT
PREPARE TRANSACTION https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-prepare-transaction.html
log_autovacuum_min_duration https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/runtime-config-logging.html#GUC-LOG-AUTOVACUUM-MIN-DURATION
PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful (blog post by Nikolay) https://postgres.ai/blog/20210831-postgresql-subtransactions-considered-harmful
statement_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-STATEMENT-TIMEOUT
idle_in_transaction_session_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-IDLE-IN-TRANSACTION-SESSION-TIMEOUT
lock_timeout https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-LOCK-TIMEOUT

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

PostGIS Mar 13, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael are joined by Regina Obe and Paul Ramsey to discuss PostGIS.
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

Regina Obe https://postgres.fm/people/regina-obe
Paul Ramsey https://postgres.fm/people/paul-ramsey
PostGIS https://postgis.net
MobilityDB https://github.com/MobilityDB/MobilityDB
pgRouting https://github.com/pgRouting/pgrouting
Google BigQuery GIS public alpha blog post https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/whats-happening-bigquery-integrated-machine-learning-maps-and-more
PostGIS Day 2025 talk recordings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuNO_cW2g-0&list=PLavJpcg8cl1EkQWoCbczsOjFTe-SHg_8m
pg_lake https://github.com/Snowflake-Labs/pg_lake
GeoParquet https://geoparquet.org
ST_DWithin https://postgis.net/docs/ST_DWithin.html
Postgres JSONB Columns and TOAST: A Performance Guide https://www.snowflake.com/en/engineering-blog/postgres-jsonb-columns-and-toast
FOSS4G https://foss4g.org
OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org
PgDay Boston https://2026.pgdayboston.org
SKILL.md file https://github.com/postgis/postgis/blob/68dde711039986b47eb62feda45bb24b13b0ea37/doc/SKILL.md
Production query plans without production data (blog post by Radim Marek) https://boringsql.com/posts/portable-stats
PostgreSQL: Up and Running, 4th Edition (by Regina Obe, Leo Hsu) https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/postgresql-up-and/9798341660885

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by:

Michael Christofides, founder of pgMustard
Nikolay Samokhvalov, founder of Postgres.ai

With credit to:

Jessie Draws for the elephant artwork

Plan flips Mar 06, 2026

Show notes

Nik and Michael discuss query plan flips in Postgres — what they are, some causes, mitigations, longer term solutions, and the recent outage at Clerk.
Here are some links to things they mentioned:

Recent postmortem from Clerk https://clerk.com/blog/2026-02-19-system-outage-postmortem
The real cost of random I/O (blog post by Tomas Vondra) https://vondra.me/posts/the-real-cost-of-random-io
autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-vacuum.html#GUC-AUTOVACUUM-ANALYZE-SCALE-FACTOR
default_statistics_target https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-query.html#GUC-DEFAULT-STATISTICS-TARGET
pg_hint_plan https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan
Aurora PostgreSQL query plan management https://docs.aws.amazon.comAmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/AuroraPostgreSQL.Optimize.Start.html
pg_stat_plans https://github.com/pganalyze/pg_stat_plans
pg_plan_alternatives https://jnidzwetzki.github.io/2026/03/04/pg-plan-alternatives.html
Waiting for Postgres 19: Better Planner Hints with Path Generation Strategies https://pganalyze.com/blog/5mins-postgres-19-better-planner-hints

~~~

What did you like or not like? What should we discuss next time? Let us know via a YouTube comment, on social media, or by commenting on our Google doc!

~~~

Postgres FM is produced by: