Identity at Scale - How Okta uses Postgres
Friday, October 25 at 10:30–11:20
At Okta we have a wide range of different state and persistence dedicated systems. These range from regular key-value stores like Redis, a large fleet of NoSQL databases of the likes of DynamoDB and MongoDB, and ever larger and more predominant usage of PostgreSQL for a wide majority of new and old use cases. This talk is all about the operational challenges of managing a fleet of 650+ Postgres database clusters, spread across two cloud providers, and in a variety of different use cases, with different operational profiles to each of them. We will uncover a range of operational challenges such as: * Database operational procedures: backups/restore, version management, data retention and observability for 650+ clusters * Sizing: when and how to scale up individual clusters * Same database, different use cases: full text search vs basic CRUD vs spike traffic management are handled from a database perspective and what issues/challenges we encounter dealing with non-predictable problems. * Same database engine, different deployments: tactics and deployment practices on how to handle multi and single tenant deployments, the performance and operational implications of such scenarios. * Database Topology: how our clusters are designed per client and resiliency needs in mind.
What we would like the attendee to get from this session: * A good set of live production examples and lessons learned on managing a large postgres fleet on a variety of different constraints. * How different use cases, combined with single vs multi-tenant deployments can drive your database optimisation efforts * What and how to handle performance issues at scale due to unexpected load or cascading effects of "bad" releases. * How to build for failure and where databases take an important role on such an architecture.
This is an operational focussed talk were we will focus on a lot lessons learned, where a natural comparison between different database engines will be used for highlighting the how and why we are using PostgreSQL and where we are heading in terms of broader adoption of the technology @okta-oauth-dep.
