Also, are there a minimum number of nodes required for PayG (not on-prem)?
I had to write off Xata (Now called Xata Lite) in the past due to the complicated pricing/plans while not being sure it did what I needed. But the new pricing is understandable and with Neon's acquisition I want to know my options.
EDIT: I missed this section at the bottom since I was already off reading other parts of the website:
> Are you looking for a simple, serverless, no-frills Postgres hosting for your side project, prototype, non-profit or vibe coded app? Xata Lite offers a generous free tier and per-storage pricing.
> Are you a Startup, Scaleup, or Enterprise that is running Postgres at scale? Then the new Xata Postgres platform brings you all the benefits outlined by this blog post.
Hmm, as much as I hate being lumped in with "vibe coded apps" I think Xata would only want me on Xata Lite. I'm not running Postgres "at scale". I do want a no-frills Postgres hosting but Xata Lite's pricing is annoying and hard to guesstimate.
I'm curious if split brain cases already experienced. At scale, it should be so https://github.com/cloudnative-pg/cloudnative-pg/issues/7407
My understanding after looking into it, it seems that Xata+SimplyBlock is expected to use ReadWriteOnce persistent volume access modes. This means the claim can only be bound to one node.
I think this solves the split-brain problem because any new postgres readwrite pods on new nodes will fail to bind the volume claim, but it means there's no high-availability possible in the event the node fails. At least, I think that's how kubernetes handles it - I couldn't find too much explaining the failure modes of persistent volumes, but I don't see many other solutions.
At Neon, we solve this issue by having our storage nodes form a consensus protocol with the postgres node. If a new postgres node comes online, they will both contend for multi-paxos leadership. I assume the loser will crash-backoff to reset the in-memory tables so there's no inconsistency if it tries to reclaim the leadership again and wins. In the normal mode with no split-brain and one leader, multi-paxos has low overhead for WAL committing.
Have you talked about this anywhere? I (and I assume many other HN folks) would appreciate any detail you'd be willing to share.
The app now moved to Prisma's postgres hosting and it works like a charm, only thing that changed is the db.
Just to make sure, I suppose this is on the Xata Lite free tier, not on the Postgres at scale platform that this blog post talks about.
/s
