PostgreSQL on Docker

PostgreSQL is the world's most advanced open source relational database. Running it in Docker simplifies deployment and maintenance.

Basic Deployment (docker-compose)

version: "3.8"
services:
  db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: myuser
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: mysecretpassword
      POSTGRES_DB: mydatabase
    volumes:
      - ./pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"

High Availability (HA)

For critical production environments, Patroni or CloudNativePG (on Kubernetes) is recommended. A simple Master-Replica setup requires manual configuration of primary_conninfo on the replica and wal_level=replica on the primary.

Backups

Regular use of pg_dump is fundamental:

docker exec -t my-postgres pg_dump -U myuser mydatabase > backup.sql