Crunchy PostgreSQL Operator 4.2.0 Released - DCS HA, Synchronous Replication, Clone, and more

Crunchy Data is pleased to announce the release of the Crunchy
PostgreSQL Operator 4.2.0, which automates and simplifies deploying
and managing of open source PostgreSQL clusters on Kubernetes and
other Kubernetes-enabled Platforms. Instructions for getting started
with the PostgreSQL Operator can be found here:

https://access.crunchydata.com/documentation/postgres-operator/latest/quickstart/

This release introduces support for high-availability operations
leveraging the Kubernetes distributed consensus store. This allows
real-time failover to be independent from the PostgreSQL Operator. The
PostgreSQL Operator uses the open source Patroni high-availability
framework and the open source disaster recovery management tool
pgBackRest to enable this functionality.

Major features for the 4.2.0 release include:

- An improved PostgreSQL HA (high-availability) solution using
distributed consensus that is backed by Kubernetes. This includes:
- Elimination of the PostgreSQL Operator as the arbiter that decides
when a cluster should fail over
- Support for Pod anti-affinity, which indicates to Kubernetes
schedule pods (e.g. PostgreSQL instances) on separate nodes
- Failed primaries now automatically heal, which significantly
reduces the time in which they can rejoin the cluster.
- Introduction of synchronous replication for workloads that are
sensitive to transaction loss (with a tradeoff of performance and
potentially availability)
- Standardization of physical backups and restores on pgBackRest
- Introduction of the ability to clone PostgreSQL clusters using the
pgo clone command. This feature copies the pgBackRest repository from
a cluster and creates a new, single instance primary as its own
cluster.
- Allow one to use their own certificate authority (CA) when
interfacing with the Operator API, and to specify usage of the CA from
the `pgo` command-line interface (CLI)

For a full list of features, including detailed descriptions of these
changes, please see the release notes:

https://github.com/CrunchyData/postgres-operator/releases/tag/v4.2.0

The PostgreSQL Operator 4.2.0 release also includes the following
software versions upgrades:

- The PostgreSQL containers now use versions 12.1, 11.6, 10.11,
9.6.16, and 9.5.20.
- pgBackRes is upgraded to use version 2.20
- pgBouncer is upgraded to use version 1.12

The PostgreSQL Operator is tested with Kubernetes 1.13+ and other
Kubernetes enabled platforms. For this release, we added compatibility
with Kubernetes 1.16+.

### Links

- PostgreSQL Operator: https://github.com/CrunchyData/postgres-operator
- Quickstart: https://access.crunchydata.com/documentation/postgres-operator/latest/quickstart/
- Documentation: https://access.crunchydata.com/documentation/postgres-operator/
- Release Notes:
https://github.com/CrunchyData/postgres-operator/releases/tag/v4.2.0
- Homepage: https://www.crunchydata.com

Crunchy Data is proud to support the development and maintenance of
the PostgreSQL Operator.