PostgreSQL 12 High Availability Cookbook - Third Edition

Adjusting the numbers

We already mentioned that the growth curve used here is extremely aggressive. We can't risk ever running out of space in a production database and still consider ourselves highly available. However, there is probably a safe position between the current growth rate of the database, and the compounded estimate, especially since we are doubling the allocation anyway.

In the preceding real-world example, the database is likely to have a size between 2,315 GB and 4,374 GB. If we split the difference, that's 3,345 GB. Furthermore, we don't necessarily have to double that number if we're comfortable having a disk device that's 70% full 3 years from now, instead of 50%. With that in mind, we would probably be safe with 5 TB ...