Go ahead, self-host Postgres

Posted by pavel_lishin 12/20/2025

Go ahead, self-host Postgres(pierce.dev)

683 points | 396 commentspage 7

cromulent 12/20/2025|

Without disagreeing:

Sometimes it is nice to simplify the conversation with non-tech management. Oh, you want HA / DR / etc? We click a button and you get it (multi-AZ). Clicking the button doubles your DB costs from x to y. Please choose.

Then you have one less repeating conversation and someone to blame.

999900000999 12/20/2025||

I've had to set up postgres manually ( before docker TBF) and it's best described as suffering.

Things will go wrong. And it's all your fault. You can't just blame AWS.

Also are we changing the definition of self hosting. Self hosting on Digital Ocean ?!

reillyse 12/20/2025||

Disk read write performance is also orders of magnitude better/cheaper/faster.

ttkciar 12/21/2025||

Huh. I thought hosting one's own databases was still the norm. Guess I'm just stuck in the past, or don't consume cloud vendor marketing, or something.

Glad my employer is still one of the sane ones.

FragrantRiver 12/20/2025||

People really love jumping through hoops to avoid spending five dollars.

jurschreuder 12/20/2025||

I moved from AWS RDS to ScaleWay RDS, had the same effect on cost

heyalexej 12/20/2025|

Without stating actual numbers if not comfortable, what was the % savings one over the other? Happy with performance? Looking at potential of doing the same move.

banditelol 12/21/2025||

One of the things that made me think twice for self hosting postgres is securing the OS I host PG on. Any recommendation where to start for that?

danparsonson 12/21/2025|

Can you get away without exposing it to the internet? Firewall it off altogether, or just open the address of a specific machine that needs access to it?

polskibus 12/21/2025||

What's the SOTA for on-prem Postgres, in terms of point-in-time-recovery? are there any well-tested tools for it?

bradley13 12/20/2025||

Huh? Maybe I missed something, but...why should self-hosting a database server be hard or scary? Sure, you are then responsible for security backups, etc...but that's not really different in the cloud - if anything, the cloud makes it more complicated.

m4ck_ 12/20/2025||

Well for the clickops folks who've built careers on the idea that 'systems administration is dead'... I imagine having to open a shell and install some stuff or modify a configuration file is quite scary.

empthought 12/20/2025|||

Self-hosting a database server is not particularly hard or scary for an engineer.

Hiring and replacing engineers who can and want to manage database servers can be hard or scary for employers.

Nextgrid 12/20/2025||

> Hiring and replacing engineers who can and want to manage database servers can be hard or scary for employers.

I heard there's this magical thing called "money" that is claimed to help with this problem. You offer even half of the AWS markup to your employees and suddenly they like managing database servers. Magic I tell you!

xboxnolifes 12/20/2025||

I'd say a managed dB, at minimum, should be handling upgrades and backups for you. If it doesn't, thats not a managed db, thats a self-service db. You're paying a premium to do the work yourself.

geldedus 12/20/2025|

Pros self-host their DB's

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