Monthly health report
System health, the incidents of the month and what caused them, and the optimization opportunities found, written to be read by someone who was not in the room.
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL is where workloads land when commercial licensing stops making sense, and it repays the attention it is given more than it forgives the attention it is not. Fortified Data runs PostgreSQL environments, from replication and failover through extensions and query design, and moves workloads onto it from Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL.
Self-hosted and managed cloud. Senior US-based DBAs.
What Fortified Data does on PostgreSQL
Fortified Data provides managed services, consulting, and assessments for PostgreSQL, covering monitoring and incident response, query and index tuning, replication and high availability clustering, backup and disaster recovery, security hardening with role-based access control, encryption, and audit logging, minor version upgrades and patching, architecture and scalability review, migration onto PostgreSQL from Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL, and advanced feature work including JSONB, full-text search, geographic data types, and custom extensions, on self-hosted instances and on Amazon RDS, Google Cloud SQL, and Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL arrives in an estate two ways. A development team chooses it for a new application, or a finance conversation about Oracle renewal ends with somebody asking what the alternative costs. The two produce very different environments, and the second one usually arrives carrying assumptions that were true of the engine it left.
This page states what Fortified Data does on PostgreSQL rather than what PostgreSQL is. The supported deployments, the advanced feature work, and the deliverables are below.
The work on a PostgreSQL estate
Six areas, covered continuously under a managed service and individually as project work.
Monitoring and incident response
Continuous monitoring across performance, availability, and security, with proactive maintenance and remediation attached rather than an alert nobody owns.
Query tuning and index strategy
Analysis of the query patterns the application actually produces, index design against them, and configuration tuning, which on PostgreSQL is where most of the available performance sits.
Replication, availability, and failover
Replication setup and management, high availability clustering, and failover procedures designed against your recovery time and recovery point objectives and tested rather than assumed.
Backup and disaster recovery
Backup strategy, retention, and recovery testing, planned for the whole environment rather than per instance, so a recovery has a documented procedure behind it.
Security hardening and compliance
Role-based access control, encryption, and audit logging configured against the obligations in scope for your data, including HIPAA and GDPR requirements.
Architecture, scaling, and migration
Database architecture and scalability review, horizontal and vertical scaling recommendations, and migration onto PostgreSQL from Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and legacy systems.
Deployments, extensions, and version currency
What is supported, and what that support means
PostgreSQL is supported self-hosted and as a managed cloud service on Amazon RDS, Google Cloud SQL, and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The managed variants remove some administrative work and none of the performance, security, sizing, or design work, and they add constraints of their own: the extensions available are the ones the provider allows, and the configuration surface is narrower than on a self-hosted instance. Which variant an application should run on is a decision worth making deliberately rather than inheriting.
Version currency is the constraint that catches PostgreSQL estates. Minor releases carry security fixes and are low risk to apply, so falling behind on them is a choice nobody consciously made. Major upgrades need planning, extension compatibility checking, and a tested way back, and an estate that has skipped several is the most common finding on a PostgreSQL review.
- Self-hosted PostgreSQL, on premises and on cloud infrastructure
- Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
- Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL
- Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Replication, high availability clustering, and failover
- Role-based access control, encryption, and audit logging
- JSONB and document-shaped workloads
- Full-text search
- Geographic and spatial data types
- Custom extensions, and extension compatibility across upgrades
- Data warehousing and business intelligence integration
Runs on
On premises
AWS
Google Cloud
Microsoft Azure
What you receive
Evidence, on a cadence, in writing, plus the knowledge transfer the source page promises and most vendors quietly drop.
Performance baseline and change list
A measured baseline, then every tuning change recorded with what it altered and what it produced, so an improvement can be proved rather than asserted.
Backup and recovery evidence
Confirmation that backup jobs completed, and the results of recovery tests, which is the difference between a backup strategy and a backup schedule.
Replication and failover documentation
The replication topology and failover procedure as they actually stand, written down rather than held by whoever configured them.
Upgrade and patch plan
Where each instance sits against current releases, which extensions constrain an upgrade, and a sequenced plan for closing the gap.
Scalability assessment
Whether the environment can carry the next two years of growth, with horizontal and vertical scaling options costed rather than described.
Why Fortified Data on PostgreSQL
Both sides of a migration
Most PostgreSQL work starts on another engine. The same team covers Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL, so the conversion is planned by people who know what the source actually did rather than what its documentation says.
The features, not just the instance
JSONB, full-text search, geographic types, and custom extensions are where PostgreSQL earns its place and where an estate accumulates problems nobody is watching for.
Managed cloud still needs a DBA
Amazon RDS, Cloud SQL, and Azure Database take over backups and patching. They do not write an index, size an instance, or notice that the query plan changed after the last release.
Common questions about PostgreSQL services
Which PostgreSQL deployments does Fortified Data support?
Self-hosted PostgreSQL on premises and on cloud infrastructure, and the managed services Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Fortified Data supports mixed arrangements, which is the usual case once an estate has been running for a few years.
Do we still need a DBA if PostgreSQL runs on Amazon RDS or Cloud SQL?
A managed cloud service takes over provisioning, backups, and patching. It does not design an index, size an instance against the workload, resolve a query plan that changed after an upgrade, set access control and audit logging to meet a compliance obligation, or tell you that the spend no longer matches the usage. Those are the areas Fortified Data clients on managed services bring, and they are where the cost and the risk actually sit.
Can Fortified Data migrate an Oracle or SQL Server database to PostgreSQL?
Yes. Fortified Data runs migrations onto PostgreSQL from Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and legacy systems as fixed-scope engagements, covering schema and data type mapping, stored procedure and application code conversion, row-level validation against the source, and a tested rollback path. The assessment also names the workloads that do not convert cleanly, which is the half of the decision most business cases skip.
How does Fortified Data handle PostgreSQL high availability?
Through replication and high availability clustering configured against stated recovery time and recovery point objectives, with failover procedures documented and tested rather than assumed. Backup strategy and disaster recovery planning are designed alongside it, because a failover plan that has never been exercised is a diagram.
Does Fortified Data work with PostgreSQL extensions and advanced features?
Yes. JSONB and document-shaped workloads, full-text search, geographic and spatial data types, and custom extensions are supported, including extension compatibility checking as part of upgrade planning. Extensions are also a common reason a PostgreSQL estate falls behind on versions, so they are reviewed as part of version currency rather than separately.
Can a PostgreSQL environment meet HIPAA or GDPR requirements?
The database layer can be configured to support them, and that is the part Fortified Data is responsible for: role-based access control, encryption, and audit logging set against the obligations in scope for your data, with the configuration documented as evidence. Compliance itself is a property of the whole system rather than of the database, so the database evidence forms part of a wider program.
Three ways to work with us
The same PostgreSQL team, engaged three different ways.
Managed service plans
We run your environment, with 24/7 monitoring, maintenance, and proactive improvement.
On-Call DBA
A guaranteed 15-minute emergency response plus monthly on-demand hours that bank when unused.
Database consulting and projects
Project-based engagements for migrations, performance tuning, data modernization, business intelligence, and high availability and disaster recovery.
Start with the PostgreSQL estate you actually have
A health check documents performance, availability, security, version currency, and growth headroom across every instance, self-hosted or managed, and produces a prioritized list of what to fix first.
Let us show you what's possible.