Database Insights

Production setup of Ola Hallengren's SQL Server Maintenance Solution: the four jobs that matter, FULL/DIFF/LOG backup cadence for your RPO, DBCC CHECKDB scheduling, IndexOptimize tuning, encryption, and CommandLog-based alerting.

Set up PostgreSQL monitoring with Prometheus and postgres_exporter. Includes install steps, critical alert rules, Grafana dashboard panels, and custom query metrics.

PostgreSQL 16 introduced logical replication from standbys, pg_stat_io, SQL/JSON constructors, COPY improvements, and pg_stat_checkpointer. Full DBA upgrade guide.

Run PostgreSQL schema changes without locking: CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY, NOT VALID constraints, expand-contract column type changes, and lock_timeout. Covers pg_repack for table rewrites.

Use pg_cron to schedule SQL jobs inside PostgreSQL. Covers installation, cron syntax, partition maintenance, materialized view refresh, job monitoring, and RDS setup.

Define meaningful SLOs and SLAs for your database tier — latency, availability, durability, and error budgets

A practical runbook for database incidents — triage, diagnosis, escalation, and post-mortem for MySQL and PostgreSQL

Configure pgBackRest for full, differential, and WAL archiving backups with S3 storage and point-in-time recovery

In 2026, more database versions are hitting end-of-life than any year in recent history.

Build a production database DR runbook covering RTO/RPO definitions, failover steps, PITR recovery commands, and a verification checklist. Test it quarterly.

PostgreSQL's logging system is powerful but requires careful configuration to be useful in production. Learn how to capture slow queries, connection events, and DDL changes without drowning in noise.

Build a complete database observability stack with Prometheus metrics, slow query logs, and OpenTelemetry distributed traces. Includes alert rules for replication lag and cache hit rate.