CloudNativePG

CloudNativePG is an open source operator designed to manage PostgreSQL workloads on any supported Kubernetes cluster running in private, public, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments. CloudNativePG adheres to DevOps principles and concepts such as declarative configuration and immutable infrastructure.

It defines a new Kubernetes resource called Cluster representing a PostgreSQL cluster made up of a single primary and an optional number of replicas that co-exist in a chosen Kubernetes namespace for High Availability and offloading of read-only queries.

Applications that reside in the same Kubernetes cluster can access the PostgreSQL database using a service which is solely managed by the operator, without having to worry about changes of the primary role following a failover or a switchover. Applications that reside outside the Kubernetes cluster, need to configure a Service or Ingress object to expose the Postgres via TCP. Web applications can take advantage of the native connection pooler based on PgBouncer.

CloudNativePG was originally built by EDB, then released open source under Apache License 2.0 and submitted for CNCF Sandbox in April 2022. The source code repository is in Github.

Note

Based on the Operator Capability Levels model, users can expect a "Level V - Auto Pilot" set of capabilities from the CloudNativePG Operator.

Supported Kubernetes distributions

Each minor release of CloudNativePG is designed to work with a range of Kubernetes versions, usually the ones supported by the CNCF at the time the minor version was first released.

Please refer to the "Supported releases" page for details.

Container images

The CloudNativePG community maintains container images for both the operator and PostgreSQL (the operand).

Operator

The CloudNativePG operator container images are available on the cloudnative-pg project's GitHub Container Registry in three different flavors:

  • Debian 12 distroless
  • Red Hat UBI 9 micro (suffix -ubi9)
  • Red Hat UBI 8 micro (suffix -ubi8)

Red Hat UBI images are primarily intended for OLM consumption.

Operands

The PostgreSQL operand container images are available for all PGDG supported versions of PostgreSQL, across multiple architectures, directly from the postgres-containers project's GitHub Container Registry.

Daily jobs ensure that critical vulnerabilities (CVEs) in the entire stack are promptly addressed.

Additionally, the community provides images for the PostGIS extension.

Main features

  • Direct integration with Kubernetes API server for High Availability, without requiring an external tool
  • Self-Healing capability, through:
    • failover of the primary instance by promoting the most aligned replica
    • automated recreation of a replica
  • Planned switchover of the primary instance by promoting a selected replica
  • Scale up/down capabilities
  • Definition of an arbitrary number of instances (minimum 1 - one primary server)
  • Definition of the read-write service, to connect your applications to the only primary server of the cluster
  • Definition of the read-only service, to connect your applications to any of the instances for reading workloads
  • Declarative management of PostgreSQL configuration, including certain popular Postgres extensions through the cluster spec: pgaudit, auto_explain, pg_stat_statements, and pg_failover_slots
  • Declarative management of Postgres roles, users and groups
  • Support for Local Persistent Volumes with PVC templates
  • Reuse of Persistent Volumes storage in Pods
  • Separate volumes for WAL files and tablespaces
  • Declarative management of Postgres tablespaces, including temporary tablespaces
  • Rolling updates for PostgreSQL minor versions
  • In-place or rolling updates for operator upgrades
  • TLS connections and client certificate authentication
  • Support for custom TLS certificates (including integration with cert-manager)
  • Continuous WAL archiving to an object store (AWS S3 and S3-compatible, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage)
  • Backups on volume snapshots (where supported by the underlying storage classes)
  • Backups on object stores (AWS S3 and S3-compatible, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage)
  • Full recovery and Point-In-Time recovery from an existing backup on volume snapshots or object stores
  • Offline import of existing PostgreSQL databases, including major upgrades of PostgreSQL
  • Online import of existing PostgreSQL databases, including major upgrades of PostgreSQL, through PostgreSQL native logical replication (imperative, via the cnpg plugin)
  • Fencing of an entire PostgreSQL cluster, or a subset of the instances in a declarative way
  • Hibernation of a PostgreSQL cluster in a declarative way
  • Support for Synchronous Replicas
  • Support for HA physical replication slots at cluster level
  • Backup from a standby
  • Backup retention policies (based on recovery window, only on object stores)
  • Parallel WAL archiving and restore to allow the database to keep up with WAL generation on high write systems
  • Support tagging backup files uploaded to an object store to enable optional retention management at the object store layer

  • Replica clusters for PostgreSQL deployments across multiple Kubernetes clusters, enabling private, public, hybrid, and multi-cloud architectures

  • Connection pooling with PgBouncer

  • Support for node affinity via nodeSelector
  • Native customizable exporter of user defined metrics for Prometheus through the metrics port (9187)
  • Standard output logging of PostgreSQL error messages in JSON format
  • Automatically set readOnlyRootFilesystem security context for pods
  • cnpg plugin for kubectl
  • Simple bind and search+bind LDAP client authentication
  • Multi-arch format container images
  • OLM installation

Info

CloudNativePG does not use StatefulSets for managing data persistence. Rather, it manages persistent volume claims (PVCs) directly. If you are curious, read "Custom Pod Controller" to know more.

About this guide

Follow the instructions in the "Quickstart" to test CloudNativePG on a local Kubernetes cluster using Kind, or Minikube.

In case you are not familiar with some basic terminology on Kubernetes and PostgreSQL, please consult the "Before you start" section.

Postgres, PostgreSQL and the Slonik Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada, and used with their permission.