The Need for Speed: Mastering WAL-G for High-Performance Backup & Recovery on Kubernetes
April 21–22
Running PostgreSQL on Kubernetes exposes standard backup strategies to the I/O limitations of networked storage. While WAL-G is widely adopted for cloud-native PostgreSQL, many implementations fail to leverage its most powerful storage and recovery optimizations.
This session examines the architecture of high-performance, resilient recovery systems. We will begin with WAL-G's internals, detailing precisely how Delta Backups and ZSTD compression reduce storage footprints and I/O overhead compared to traditional filesystem snapshots.
The discussion will then deep-dive into the mechanics of rapid restoration. We will analyze how to configure WAL prefetching for accelerated Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) and leverage S3-compatible storage to maximize throughput. The outcome is a technical blueprint for the rapid restoration of terabyte-scale databases.
Key Takeaways: * Delta Backup Mechanics: Understanding WAL-G's block-level tracking logic and its specific I/O advantages over snapshots for large datasets. * PITR Acceleration: Mastering WAL prefetching techniques to significantly reduce recovery duration. * Storage Optimization: Leveraging ZSTD compression and efficient S3 object storage protocols to minimize overhead. * Automated Verification: Implementing wal-verify to continuously validate backup integrity and recoverability.