Gabriele Bartolini

Explore the new readiness probe introduced in CloudNativePG 1.26, which advances Kubernetes-native lifecycle management for PostgreSQL. Building on the improved probing infrastructure discussed in my previous article, this piece focuses on how readiness probes ensure that only fully synchronised and healthy instances—particularly replicas—are eligible to serve traffic or be promoted to primary. Special emphasis is placed on the streaming probe type and its integration with synchronous replication, giving administrators fine-grained control over failover behaviour and data consistency.

CloudNativePG 1.26 introduces enhanced support for Kubernetes startup probes, giving users finer control over how and when PostgreSQL instances are marked as “started.” This article explores the new capabilities, including both basic and advanced configuration modes, and explains the different probe strategies—such as pg_isready, SQL query, and streaming for replicas. It provides practical guidance for improving the reliability of high-availability Postgres clusters by aligning startup conditions with actual database readiness.

Learn how to set up a PostgreSQL cluster with the pgvector extension on Kubernetes using CloudNativePG—all in a fully declarative way. This article walks you through the process in just a few minutes, from cluster creation to extension installation.

CloudNativePG 1.26 introduces one of its most anticipated features: declarative in-place major upgrades for PostgreSQL using pg_upgrade. This new approach allows you to upgrade PostgreSQL clusters by simply modifying the imageName in their configuration—just like a minor version update. While it requires brief downtime, it significantly reduces operational overhead, making it ideal for managing large fleets of PostgreSQL databases in Kubernetes. In this article, I will explore how it works, its benefits and limitations, and cover an upgrade of a 2.2TB database.

Managing extensions is one of the biggest challenges in running PostgreSQL on Kubernetes. In this article, I explain why I believe CloudNativePG —now a CNCF Sandbox project—is on the verge of a breakthrough. Two important new features for both PostgreSQL and Kubernetes—the extension_control_path option and image volumes—will guarantee immutability to extension container images.