Gabriele Bartolini

CloudNativePG 1.30 introduces the DatabaseRole CRD and built-in TLS client certificate issuance, letting application teams own their PostgreSQL credentials declaratively and connect without ever handling a password.

This article compares CloudNativePG and Crunchy PGO, two of the most adopted open-source operators for running PostgreSQL on Kubernetes. It covers architecture, image design, backup strategy, major version upgrades, observability, licensing and community health. As a co-founder and maintainer of CloudNativePG, I make no claim to neutrality, and I say so upfront. What I can offer is informed bias, grounded in years of daily work on the project and a genuine respect for what Crunchy Data built in this space.

A step-by-step guide to migrating a PostgreSQL 17 cluster managed by Crunchy PGO v6 to PostgreSQL 18 under CloudNativePG. Two paths are covered: a fully declarative offline migration using CloudNativePG’s built-in pg_dump import, and an online migration using native PostgreSQL logical replication for a near-zero-downtime cutover.

Yesterday, David Steele announced the end of life of pgBackRest — a PostgreSQL backup tool he maintained for thirteen years. The reasons are structural, not personal, and they are a reminder of a pattern we see too often in open-source infrastructure. This article reflects on what that means, on the architectural rivalry between pgBackRest and Barman, and on why CloudNativePG users can take confidence from both the project’s CNCF governance and the virtuous cycle of commercial support that sustains it.

This article examines how managed database services deliberately suppress access to the physical replication stream, turning operational convenience into permanent lock-in. It makes the case for a cloud-neutral stack — PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, and CloudNativePG — as the only architecture that returns full operational sovereignty to the organisation that owns the data.