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Reducing iteration time by using a custom PostgreSQL broker

May 5, 2022

The cloud.gov team recently deprecated shared database instance plans.

Unlike dedicated instance plans, which each provision a separate RDS database instance and take a
while to create, shared instance plans re-used the same RDS database instance and created new
databases within the same instance, which completed almost instantly.

You can replicate the behavior of the deprecated shared instance plans using an
open-source service broker known as postgres-tinsmith .

Please note that while this approach has been tested manually, the postgres-tinsmith  repo is not
actively maintained by the cloud.gov team, so this documentation is provided as a proof-of-concept only and does not offer any guarantees of production-readiness.

1. Create a dedicated RDS service

View our available dedicated RDS instance plans for PostgreSQL:

cf marketplace -e aws-rds

Create a PostgreSQL service using one of the dedicated instance plans. For example:

cf create-service aws-rds micro-psql <dedicated-db-name>

2. Deploy and configure postgres-tinsmith 

Follow the instructions in the repo README to create and configure the postgres-tinsmith  service broker.

Make sure to use the <dedicated-db-name>  created in step 1 as the database service name to bind to
postgres-tinsmith .

3. Create a database

Once postgres-tinsmith  is deployed and configured, create a database using the new shared  plan of the
postgres  service:

cf create-service postgres shared <db-name>

4. Bind database to your application 

cf bind-service <application-name> <db-name>
cf restage <application-name>

Alternately, you can bind the database service to your application using a manifest.yml  file.

Verifying your bound database service

Running cf env <application>  (e.g. cf env postgres-example-app ) should show information about the
bound <db-name>  in the VCAP_SERVICES  environment variable. See the CloudFoundry
documentation for more information about VCAP_SERVICES .

5. Use the database in your application

Make sure that your application properly reads and implements the credentials for the database from
the VCAP_SERVICES  environment variable.