On Dec 9, 2011, at 3:42 PM, Cesar Massaki Kamiya wrote:

1. Anyone using PostgreSQL for enterprise mission critical system ?

Enova Financial runs all of our OLTP and a large portion of our reporting on Postgres. Our largest OLTP database is ~1.8TB and the last time I measured it (almost 2 years ago) it averaged 640TPS and peaked at over 4kTPS.

Downtime on that database costs the company well over $100k/hour.

2. How big are the servers you are running PostgreSQL, Is there anyone using more than 32 cores or 256GB memory ?

We don't currently have anything over 32 cores, but we have several servers with 1/2TB of memory. The vast majority of that memory is used by the filesystem cache.

3. What OS you are using to run this mission critical system on PostgreSQL ? Linux, Unix ?

Linux.

4. Who provides PostgreSQL support ? Do you have any support contract with a third party company ? If so, how much is the monthly support fee ?

We use Command Prompt for our formal support contract, but we have also used consulting services from PgX and 2nd Quadrant.

As others have mentioned, support on the mailing list is generally excellent and you will have a challenge hiring someone that is highly knowledgable in Postgres (I would estimate the pool of people who could be considered experts in Postgres and would consider a job offer in the US to be less than 1000). Your best bet may be to find someone who is experienced in a number of other RDBMSes and is willing to learn Postgres. Just make sure to bump up their compensation as they become experienced or you risk loosing them (my rule of thumb is that PG knowledge is worth ~25% more than comparable Oracle knowlege).
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Jim C. Nasby, Database Architect jim@nasby.net
512.569.9461 (cell) http://jim.nasby.net