Empowering Developers with a Database DevOps Strategy
Self-service infrastructure sounds simple—until you add databases.
While modern DevOps practices have transformed how teams ship code, stateful applications like PostgreSQL still create friction that slows developers down.
The Challenge: Traditional databases don’t scale like containers. Configuration changes can require restarts. Schema updates block transactions. And one poorly tuned replica can bring down your primary database.
The Reality: Platform engineering teams struggle to balance developer speed with database stability. Without the right strategy, you end up with either bottlenecks that delay releases or self-service chaos that impacts production.
This presentation from PGConf NYC 2025 breaks down how to build a database DevOps strategy that actually works—one that removes friction for developers while maintaining the guardrails your data demands.
What You’ll Learn
Why Platform Engineering Exists
Platform teams solve a specific problem: reducing friction for developers. But databases introduce unique challenges that standard DevOps tooling wasn’t built to handle. Learn why stateful applications require a different approach.
The Postgres-Specific Challenges
PostgreSQL doesn’t behave like your application code. Configuration inheritance, replica deployment order, and parameter conflicts create complications that can break your automation. Understand the technical realities that shape your strategy.
Building Effective Guardrails
Self-service shouldn’t mean unchecked spending or production incidents. Discover how to automate the happy path while implementing warnings and controls that protect your infrastructure without slowing your team.
What Actually Works
Drawn from 20+ years of engineering and operations experience, this presentation shares practical approaches that deliver results: organizational buy-in tactics, meaningful success metrics, iterative improvements, and feedback loops that keep your platform aligned with developer needs.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Tool selection without metrics. Solving all problems at once. Communication overhead. Learn the pitfalls that derail platform engineering initiatives before you encounter them.
Why This Matters
Your developers want to move fast. Your data needs to stay secure, available, and performant. A database DevOps strategy reconciles these competing pressures by building systems that enable speed without sacrificing reliability.
Whether you’re running PostgreSQL on-premises, in the cloud, or managing a hybrid environment, the principles in this presentation apply. You’ll walk away with a framework for reducing deployment friction, protecting production data, and measuring what matters.
About the Presenter
Phil Vacca serves as Director and Global Practice Leader for Datavail’s PostgreSQL Services Practice. With over 20 years of engineering and operations experience, Phil has led platform infrastructure teams and developed expertise across cloud environments. His work focuses on helping organizations build scalable, reliable database systems that support developer productivity without compromising stability.
Stop letting database complexity slow your team down. Get practical strategies for building a DevOps approach that works for stateful applications.