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PostgreSQL continues to solidify its place as a top-tier database alternative amongst workloads operating on Kubernetes.
In the ever-evolving world of cloud-native applied sciences, PostgreSQL continues to solidify its place as a top-tier database alternative amongst workloads operating on Kubernetes. According to the Kubernetes within the Wild 2025 report, PostgreSQL now powers 36% of all database workloads operating on Kubernetes—up 6 factors since 2022—signaling its rising recognition and rising belief among the many Kubernetes neighborhood1. However, operating data-intensive PostgreSQL workloads on Kubernetes has its personal set of challenges. These embody managing Kubernetes primitives like StatefulUnits and deployments, in addition to attaining optimum efficiency by configuring storage, replication, and database settings, however that is quick evolving to a simplified expertise.
We now present two choices for deploying stateful PostgreSQL workloads primarily based on efficiency wants. To assist databases with stringent latency and scalable transaction necessities, you’ll be able to leverage Azure Container Storage to orchestrate Kubernetes quantity deployment on native NVMe to scale up IOPS whereas sustaining extraordinarily low sub-ms latency. For situations the place optimized price-performance is a precedence, Premium SSD v2 is the go-to alternative. Additionally, working with CloudNativePG, we built-in a sturdy open-source operator for PostgreSQL to assist a excessive availability database deployment mannequin on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Our superior storage choices mixed with CloudNativePG make AKS a sturdy platform for high-performance PostgreSQL workloads.
Breakthrough PostgreSQL efficiency with native NVMe
For performance-critical PostgreSQL workloads, corresponding to these dealing with large concurrent transactions or demanding, low-latency information entry, native NVMe instantly hooked up to Azure Virtual Machine (VM) SKUs is your finest wager. Using native NVMe drives with Kubernetes was difficult—it typically required establishing RAID throughout the drives and manually managing static quantity orchestrators. Azure Container Storage successfully addresses this problem.
Azure Container Storage is a totally managed, container-native storage answer, designed particularly for Kubernetes. Developers can merely request a Kubernetes quantity, and Azure will dynamically provision storage backed by the out there native NVMe drives on AKS nodes. This provides PostgreSQL customers direct connect block storage IOPS and latency inside a managed, orchestrated cloud setting. Whether you’re powering fee methods, gaming backends, or real-time personalization engines, you get the perfect of each velocity and ease. Azure Container Storage additionally helps Azure Disk and Elastic SAN (Preview), so you’ll be able to select backing storage with totally different sturdiness, scale, or value as your wants evolve—all underneath a constant, Kubernetes-native management aircraft.
Our benchmark outcomes have proven PostgreSQL attaining shut to fifteen,000 transactions per second (TPS) with single-digit millisecond end-to-end question latency with the Standard_L16s_v3 VM. When scaling as much as bigger VM SKUs like Standard_L64s_v3, we noticed TPS reaching as much as 26,000 whereas sustaining low latency. For extra particulars of our benchmark runs, consult with the comparability of storage choices part beneath.
Optimize price-performance with Premium SSD v2
Azure Premium SSD v2 affords an optimum stability of price-performance and a versatile deployment mannequin, making it particularly well-suited for manufacturing environments that must scale over time. With Premium SSD v2, you’ll be able to configure IOPS, throughput, and dimension independently—enabling PostgreSQL deployments to scale dynamically with demand whereas minimizing upfront prices and avoiding useful resource overprovisioning.
Whether you’re operating multi-tenant SaaS platforms, manufacturing methods that scale with enterprise wants, or purposes with spiky site visitors, this flexibility results in actual financial savings with out sacrificing efficiency. With as much as 80,000 IOPS and 1,200 MB/s per quantity, Premium SSD v2 helps extremely demanding PostgreSQL workloads on an infrastructure that adapts to your app.
Comparison of storage choices
To enable you assess the 2 storage choices outlined above, we performed benchmark runs utilizing the CloudNativePG operator setups on AKS with related core and reminiscence consumption, with each backing storage choices as the one variable: one leveraging native NVMe with Azure Container Storage, and the opposite utilizing Premium SSD v2 with Disk CSI driver.
For the primary configuration, we used Standard_D16d_v5 SKU and provisioned two Premium SSD v2 32 GiB disks every having 3000 IOPS and 125 MB/s throughput for log and information recordsdata. In the second setup, we ran on Standard_L16s_v3 nodes with native NVMe storage included. The check setting was configured to intently simulate a real-world manufacturing database state of affairs. TPS measures what number of particular person transactions (corresponding to INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or SELECT) a system can deal with per second. Latency refers back to the time delay between issuing a request to the database and receiving a response, which is particularly crucial for purposes requiring real-time or near-real-time responsiveness, corresponding to monetary methods, on-line gaming, or high-performance analytics.
Local NVMe on Standard_L16s_v3 delivered 14,812 TPS with an common latency of 4.321 milliseconds. PremiumV2_LRS on Standard_D16ds_v5 recorded 8,600 TPS at 7.417 milliseconds latency. See pricing comparability beneath:
*Monthly prices are primarily based on the bottom 3000 IOPS and 125 MB/s throughput. You can regulate the efficiency (capability, throughput, and IOPS) of Premium SSD v2 disks at any time, permitting workloads to be value environment friendly whereas assembly workload dimension and efficiency necessities.
**With 3 VMs of L16s_v3, you get 11.52 TB of storage allotted by default that’s used to serve the volumes created for PostgreSQL workload. For different VM sizes within the L-Series household, the worth per thirty days and allotted storage will differ.
For PostgreSQL workloads, the selection between utilizing native NVMe and Premium SSD v2 is dependent upon balancing efficiency, value, and information sturdiness. Local NVMe through Azure Container Storage affords extraordinarily low latency and excessive throughput, making it appropriate for performance-sensitive PostgreSQL deployments. The prices are greater with native NVMe, and there’s much less flexibility to scale independently of workload traits. Conversely, Premium SSD v2 offers higher price-performance effectivity and versatile scalability, making it a viable possibility for PostgreSQL situations that require dealing with elevated scale or purposes having unpredictable surges in demand or utilization. In phrases of information sturdiness, Premium SSD v2 affords domestically redundancy by default, whereas for native NVMe, it is strongly recommended to make use of a replica-based structure managed by CloudNativePG operator and an object storage-based backup method to stop information loss.
Built for top availability with CloudNativePG on Azure Kubernetes Service
For groups deploying PostgreSQL in manufacturing, excessive availability and backups are non-negotiable. With the open-source CloudNativePG operator, a extremely out there PostgreSQL cluster on AKS can simply be deployed with:
- Built-in replication and automatic failover.
- Application constant backup with native integration with Azure Blob Storage.
- Seamless integration with Azure Container Storage.
- Flexible storage choices: select Premium SSD v2 or native NVMe primarily based on workload wants.
Whether you’re supporting inside enterprise apps or customer-facing platforms, this provides you peace of thoughts with out the effort of hand-building customized excessive availability logic and separate backup workflows. Get began with deploying extremely out there PostgreSQL on AKS with CloudNativePG operator utilizing our step-by-step reference information.
Ready for the longer term
PostgreSQL is only one of many stateful workloads that organizations at the moment are confidently operating on Azure Kubernetes Service. From databases to message queues, AI inferencing, and enterprise purposes, AKS is evolving to satisfy the wants of persistent, data-heavy purposes in manufacturing.
Whether you’re deploying Redis, MongoDB, Kafka, and even ML-serving pipelines with GPU-backed nodes, AKS offers the inspiration to handle these workloads with efficiency, consistency, and operational ease, together with clear end-to-end steering.
With improvements like Azure Container Storage for native NVMe and Premium SSD v2 for scalable persistent storage, we’re making it simpler than ever to construct stateful purposes which might be: dependable, performant, and price environment friendly for mission crucial workloads.
Modernize your information layer on Kubernetes right this moment. Whether you’re operating PostgreSQL or any stateful tier, Azure delivers the efficiency and manageability to make it occur. Explore confirmed patterns and deployment choices within the AKS Stateful Workloads Overview.