Capacity Planning

DBAs are responsible for recommending the right sizing of PostgreSQL cluster hardware resources, which remains consistent for both virtual machines and physical ones in the cloud database service offerings. The capacity planning initiative involves choosing storage size, CPU, and memory resources. The instance type in the cloud determines the required capacity to stage a PostgreSQL cluster. The number of concurrent connected users, ranging between 50 to 5000 or more, determines the instance type in the cloud. Once storage is allocated, downsizing it is neither easy nor a simple process, as it involves taking a backup, creating a new instance with the desired capacity, and restoring the data, causing an outage to the availability of the critical production environment. Additionally, DBAs are responsible for designing solutions for long-term storage, short-term storage, data archival, and data retention in S3 or in Azure Data Blob storage areas for SOX and legal requirements. Thus, efficient capacity planning is a good practice for the installation of a PostgreSQL cluster on the cloud environment to optimize excessive or insufficient storage.