Using your own PostgreSQL server

You can use your own PostgreSQL v9.6+ server with Sourcegraph if you wish. For example, you may prefer this if you already have existing backup infrastructure around your own PostgreSQL server, wish to use Amazon RDS, etc.

The addition of PG* environment variables to your Sourcegraph deployment files will instruct Sourcegraph to target an external PostgreSQL server. To externalize the frontend database, use the following standard PG* variables:

PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER
PGPASSWORD
PGDATABASE
PGSSLMODE

To externalize the code intelligence database, use the following prefixed CODEINTEL_PG* variables:

CODEINTEL_PGHOST
CODEINTEL_PGPORT
CODEINTEL_PGUSER
CODEINTEL_PGPASSWORD
CODEINTEL_PGDATABASE
CODEINTEL_PGSSLMODE

sourcegraph/server

Add the following to your docker run command:

docker run [...] -e PGHOST=psql1.mycompany.org -e PGUSER=sourcegraph -e PGPASSWORD=secret -e PGDATABASE=sourcegraph -e PGSSLMODE=require -e CODEINTEL_PGHOST=psql2.mycompany.org -e CODEINTEL_PGUSER=sourcegraph -e CODEINTEL_PGPASSWORD=secret -e CODEINTEL_PGDATABASE=sourcegraph-codeintel -e CODEINTEL_PGSSLMODE=require sourcegraph/server:3.24.1

Docker Compose

Add/modify the following environment variables to all of the sourcegraph-frontend-* services and the sourcegraph-frontend-internal service in docker-compose.yaml:

sourcegraph-frontend-0:
  # ...
  environment:
    # ...
    - 'PGHOST=psql1.mycompany.org'
    - 'PGUSER=sourcegraph'
    - 'PGPASSWORD=secret'
    - 'PGDATABASE=sourcegraph'
    - 'PGSSLMODE=require'
    - 'CODEINTEL_PGHOST=psql2.mycompany.org'
    - 'CODEINTEL_PGUSER=sourcegraph'
    - 'CODEINTEL_PGPASSWORD=secret'
    - 'CODEINTEL_PGDATABASE=sourcegraph-codeintel'
    - 'CODEINTEL_PGSSLMODE=require'
  # ...

See "Environment variables in Compose" for other ways to pass these environment variables to the relevant services (including from the command line, a .env file, etc.).

Comment out / remove the internal pgsql and codeintel-db services in docker-compose.yaml since Sourcegraph is using the external one now.

# # Description: PostgreSQL database for various data.
# #
# # Disk: 128GB / persistent SSD
# # Ports exposed to other Sourcegraph services: 5432/TCP 9187/TCP
# # Ports exposed to the public internet: none
# #
# pgsql:
# container_name: pgsql
# image: 'index.docker.io/sourcegraph/postgres-11.4:19-11-14_b084311b@sha256:072481559d559cfd9a53ad77c3688b5cf583117457fd452ae238a20405923297'
# cpus: 4
# mem_limit: '2g'
# healthcheck:
#    test: '/liveness.sh'
#    interval: 10s
#    timeout: 1s
#    retries: 3
#    start_period: 15s
# volumes:
#    - 'pgsql:/data/'
# networks:
#     - sourcegraph
# restart: always

# # Description: PostgreSQL database for code intelligence data.
# #
# # Disk: 128GB / persistent SSD
# # Ports exposed to other Sourcegraph services: 5432/TCP 9187/TCP
# # Ports exposed to the public internet: none
# #
# codeintel-db:
#   container_name: codeintel-db
#   image: 'index.docker.io/sourcegraph/codeintel-db@sha256:63090799b34b3115a387d96fe2227a37999d432b774a1d9b7966b8c5d81b56ad'
#   cpus: 4
#   mem_limit: '2g'
#   healthcheck:
#     test: '/liveness.sh'
#     interval: 10s
#     timeout: 1s
#     retries: 3
#     start_period: 15s
#   volumes:
#     - 'codeintel-db:/data/'
#   networks:
#     - sourcegraph
#   restart: always

Kubernetes

Update the PG* and CODEINTEL_PG* environment variables in the sourcegraph-frontend deployment YAML file to point to the external frontend (pgsql) and code intelligence (codeintel-db) PostgreSQL instances, respectively. Again, these must not point to the same database or the Sourcegraph instance will refuse to start.

You are then free to remove the now unused pgsql and codeintel-db services and deployments from your cluster.

Version requirements

Please refer to our Postgres documentation to learn about version requirements.

Caveats

Most standard PostgreSQL environment variables may be specified (PGPORT, etc). See http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/libpq-envars.html for a full list.