Postgres Vision 2021

Why use PgBouncer? It’s a lightweight, easy to configure connection pooler and it does one job well.

We’ll give a brief summary of connection pooling and how it increases efficiency. We’ll discuss when not to use connection pooling, and demonstrate PgBouncer configuration and functionality.

But. Did you know you can also do this?

1. Scaling PgBouncer
PgBouncer is single threaded, meaning a single instance of PgBouncer isn’t going to scale on a multi-threaded/multi-CPU machine. We’ll show you how to add more PgBouncer instances for easy scaling.

2. Read-write / read only routing
Using different PgBouncer databases you can route write traffic to the primary database and route read traffic to standby databases.

3. Load balancing
Using multiple PgBouncer instances, load balancing comes for free. In addition, different standbys can be weighted appropriately.

4. Silent failover
Promotion of a new primary (with a VIP/DNS etc that always points to the primary) can be achieved transparently and silently.

5. and: DoS prevention and protection from “badly behaved” applications!
By using distinct PgBouncer port numbers you can provide database connections which prioritize traffic during sudden spikes, helping ensure essential work gets through.

You should leave the presentation wondering, is there anything PgBouncer can’t do.