The discussion revolves around testing AlloyDB on Google Cloud as a potentially cost-effective alternative to PostgreSQL. jimmy0017 notes that AlloyDB is promoted as 100% PostgreSQL-compatible and cheaper than standard PostgreSQL, citing a Google Cloud blog post. Falco shares experience with Aurora’s PostgreSQL compatibility, suggesting AlloyDB may work similarly, but questions the risk-reward trade-off given Discourse’s scalability on a single managed PostgreSQL instance. jimmy0017 confirms cost is the main incentive. Falco asks about the current GCP PostgreSQL instance specs, which jimmy0017 details as 8 vCPUs, 64 GB RAM, 596 GB SSD, and 375 GB data cache. merefield questions the scale, leading jimmy0017 to clarify that the platform serves about 2.5k daily active users, with a total of 28k users identified via a data explorer query.
I tested on Aurora when it launched the PostgreSQL compatibility and it worked pretty well back then, so I assume it will be the same here.
That said, Discourse scales pretty well on a single managed PostgreSQL vertically, so I’m interested in how much activity you see that trying something like this would make sense from a risk-reward perspective.