Containers are lightweight, portable units of software that package an application and its dependencies into a single, self-contained unit that can run consistently across various computing environments. Containers are isolated units that behave the same regardless of where they are deployed. Containers maintain consistency across different infrastructures such as local servers, self-hosted private or public clouds. Containers are highly efficient in terms of resource usage, making them ideal for deploying, scaling, and managing microservices in modern cloud-native environments. Customers can download EDB Postgres AI as an image and deploy them to a container on any standard Kubernetes platform.

Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It provides a robust framework for running distributed systems resiliently, allowing developers to manage containers across a cluster of machines seamlessly. Kubernetes handles various tasks such as load balancing, scaling containers up or down based on demand, managing application rollouts, and ensuring that containers are running and healthy for consistent day-2 operations across different environments. EDB has a strategic alliance with Red Hat to maximize the opportunities to deploy on Red Hat OpenShift; however, EDB Postgres AI can run on any standard Kubernetes platform such as Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Azure Managed Kubernetes Service (AKS), or Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), among others.

Kubernetes operator is a specialized controller that extends the inherited capabilities of Kubernetes by automating the management of complex, stateful applications. The operators integrate the experience and knowledge required to deploy, manage, and scale an application, or, in our case, Postgres, within a Kubernetes environment. Operators allow the automation of sophisticated deployment patterns such as microservices and the entire application lifecycle management for scalability and availability. EDB developed a Kubernetes Operator called EDB CloudNativePG Cluster. This operator was adopted by the Cloud Native Foundation and released as CloudNativePG, or CNPG for short.
In addition, EDB developed a more sophisticated operator that works with EDB Postgres Distributed (PGD) to take advantage of the replication, high availability, and geo-distributed patterns offered under PGD; that operator is called EDB CloudNativePG Global Cluster.

Microservices are an architectural approach to software development where an application is built through small, independent services that each perform a specific function and communicate with each other through well-defined APIs. Typically, this architecture is based on containers. Unlike monolithic architectures, where all components are tightly coupled and run as a single unit, microservices allow each service to be developed, deployed, and scaled independently. This decoupling improves agility, as teams can work on different services simultaneously using the best-suited technologies for each, providing better availability and scalability.

CloudNativePG (CNPG) is an open source operator developed by EDB under an Apache 2 license. It brings a declarative and Kubernetes-native way to manage and configure PostgreSQL clusters and backup management using volume snapshots or cloud storage. EDB CloudNativePG Cluster is a Kubernetes operator that manages the lifecycle of a Postgres database cluster for high availability, self-healing, capacity management, and switchover capabilities. It is our distribution of CNPG—with some incremental features to offer Oracle compatibility through EDB Postgres Advanced Server (EPAS) and support for additional platforms such as IBM Power and Red Hat OpenShift. EDB CloudNativePG Global Cluster is our operator that manages PGD on Kubernetes to support multi-master replication, data distribution, and high availability.

Running EDB Postgres AI in Kubernetes offers enhanced scalability, flexibility, and automation. Kubernetes provides a robust platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of EDB Postgres AI, allowing you to easily adjust resources based on demand and maintain high availability through automated failovers and replication, while EDB provides enterprise-grade Postgres with enhanced security and reliability in a containerized environment for a hybrid deployment across on-prem or any cloud.

Organizations can adopt Postgres to use in modern architectures such as microservices or CI/CD workflows.

• Scalability and flexibility: Gain flexibility and scalability by deploying Postgres on Kubernetes, dynamically adjusting the resources as needed.
• Automated management: EDB operators, EDB CloudNativePG Cluster and EDB CloudNativePG Global Cluster, help automate many operational tasks such as deployment, updates, failovers, and backups for EDB Postgres AI, reducing the risk of human error and increasing the high availability and reliability of the database.
• Consistency across environments: Running Postgres on Kubernetes provides a consistent and portable environment that works seamlessly across on-premises, cloud, or hybrid setups, ensuring uniform performance and simplifying the management of different deployment environments.

Here are some situations when you should consider running EDB Postgres AI on Kubernetes: 

• Organizations already adopting a microservices architecture or other cloud-native patterns such as CI/CD development.
• Organizations with requirements for high availability, flexible scalability, and database automation to increase responsiveness for dynamic workloads.
• Organizations searching for consistent and portable environments for deployments across different platforms such as on-premises, public, private, or hybrid cloud.
• Organizations that need to make efficient use of resources for scaling, failovers, backups, and rolling updates, with minimum disruption to everyday operations. 

The Hybrid Control Plane is a containerized management layer within the EDB Postgres AI Software Deployment that automates time-consuming and expensive administrative functions like backups, point-in-time recovery, provisioning, activity logs, user management, and alerts and notifications—enabling a hybrid database-as-a-service, even in your private data center. It offers database observability from an admin-friendly GUI, so you can monitor, observe, and respond to issues in real time across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The Hybrid Control Plane is a single solution to ensure performance, monitor 200+ metrics, keep databases secure, and enable up to 99.999% availability without additional tools, costs, and training. Further, with query diagnostics, you can identify problems and bottlenecks up to 5x faster and accelerate application performance up to 8x.