Schedule - FOSDEM PGDay 2025

What did I learn running Postgres on Windows

Date: 2025-01-31
Time: 09:20–10:10
Room: Ballroom

The MS Windows OS family has traditionally been viewed as a suboptimal host system for running Postgres in productive environments. In recent years, an increasing number of users reach out to us for help running Postgres on Windows.

The reasons for this are more intricate than the currently trending exodus from commercial databases. Postgres grew in its popularity, it is feature-reach, supported by popular .NET frameworks and importantly, it is easier to find developers who know Postgres.

In this talk, I will guide you through the various options available in 2024 for running Postgres in production on MS Windows. From "native" installer, WSL and WSL2, containers or VMs, and the usage of DBaaS. I will compare these options from both feature and performance perspectives, diving into the challenges associated with each.

Recognizing that Postgres is not just a database but an ecosystem encompassing numerous extensions, high availability and backup/recovery solutions, we will also explore strategies to fully leverage this ecosystem on Windows.

Speaker

Ilya Kosmodemiansky