Release notes

What's new

• Pageserver: Logical size and partitioning values are now computed before threshold-based eviction of data layers to avoid downloading previously evicted data layer files when restarting a Pageserver.
• Compute: Free space in the local file system that Neon uses for temporary files, unlogged tables, and the local file cache, is now monitored in order to maximize the space available for the local file cache.

Bug Fixes

• Pageserver: The delete timeline endpoint in the Pageserver management API did not return the proper HTTP code.
• Pageserver: Fixed an issue in a data storage size calculation that caused an incorrect value to be returned.
• Pageserver: Addressed unexpected data layer downloads that occurred after a Pageserver restart. The data layers most likely required for the data storage size calculation after a Pageserver restart are now retained.

What's new

• Pageserver: Improved the check for unexpected trailing data when importing a basebackup, which is tarball with files required to bootstrap a compute node.
• Pageserver: Separated the management and libpq configuration, making it possible to enable authentication for only the management HTTP API or the Compute API.
• Pageserver: Reduced the amount of metrics data collected for Pageservers.
• Pageserver, Safekeeper: Removed unused Control Plane code.
• Pageserver: JWT (JSON Web Token) generation is now permitted to fail when running Pageservers with authentication disabled, which enables running without the 'openssl' binary. This change enables switching to the EdDSA algorithm for storing JWT authentication tokens.
• Pageserver: Switched to the EdDSA algorithm for the storage JWT authentication tokens. The Neon Control Plane only supports EdDSA.
• Added metrics that enable detection of data layer eviction thrashing (repetition of eviction and on-demand download of data layers).
• Pageserver, Safekeeper: Revised $NEON_AUTH_TOKEN variable handling when connecting from a compute to Pageservers and Safekeepers.
• Safekeeper: Added an internal metric to track bytes written or read in PostgreSQL connections to Safekeepers, which enables monitoring traffic between availability zones.
• Proxy: All compute node connection errors are now logged.

Bug Fixes

• Pageserver: Fixed an issue that resulted in old data layers not being garbage collected.
• Proxy: Fixed an issue that caused Websocket connections through the Proxy to become unresponsive.

What's new

• Compute: Released a new pg_tiktoken PostgreSQL extension, created by the Neon engineering team. The extension is a wrapper for OpenAI’s tokenizer. It provides fast and efficient tokenization of data stored in a PostgreSQL database. The extension supports two functions:

  • The tiktoken_encode function takes text input and returns tokenized output, making it easier to analyze and process text data.
  • The tiktoken_count function returns the number of tokens in a text, which is useful for checking text length limits, such as those imposed by OpenAI’s language models.

  For more information about the pg_tiktoken extension, refer to the blog post: Announcing pg_tiktoken: A Postgres Extension for Fast BPE Tokenization. The pg_tiktoken code is available on GitHub.

• Compute: Added support for the PostgreSQL prefix, hll and plpgsql_check extensions. For more information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see PostgreSQL extensions.

• Compute, Pageserver, Safekeeper: Added support for RS384 and RS512 JWT tokens, used to securely transmit information as JSON objects.

• Pageserver: Removed the block cursor cache, which provided little performance benefit and would hold page references that caused deadlocks.

• Autoscaling: Added support for scaling Neon's local file cache size when scaling a virtual machine.

Bug Fixes

• Pageserver: Added logic to handle unexpected Write-Ahead Log (WAL) redo process failures, which could cause a Broken pipe error on the Pageserver. In case of a failure, the WAL redo process is now restarted, and requests to apply redo records are retried automatically.
• Pageserver: Added timeout logic for the copy operation that occurs when downloading a data layer. The timeout logic prevents a deadlock state if a data layer download is blocked.
• Safekeeper: Addressed Failed to open WAL file warnings that appeared in the Safekeeper log files. The warnings were due to an outdated truncate_lsn value on the Safekeeper, which caused the walproposer (the Postgres compute node) to download WAL records starting from a Log Sequence Number (LSN) that was older than the backup_lsn. This resulted in unnecessary WAL record downloads from cold storage.

What's new

• Compute: Added support for the PostgreSQL rum and pgTAP extensions. For more information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see PostgreSQL extensions.

Bug Fixes

• Pageserver: A system metric that monitors physical data size overflowed when a garbage collection operation was performed on an evicted data layer.
• Pageserver: An index upload was skipped when a compaction operation did not perform an on-demand download from storage. With no on-demand downloads, the compaction function would exit before scheduling the index upload.

What's new

• Compute: Added support for the following PostgreSQL extensions:
  • pg_graphql
  • pg_jsonschema
  • pg_hashids
  • pgrouting
  • hypopg
  • Server Programming Interface (SPI) extensions:
    • autoinc
    • insert_username
    • moddatetime
    • refint
  For more information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see PostgreSQL extensions.
• Compute: Updated supported PostgreSQL versions to 14.7 and 15.2, respectively.
• Pageserver: Optimized the log-structured merge-tree (LSM tree) implementation to reduce write amplification.

What's new

• Compute: Added support for the PostgreSQL xml2 and pgjwt extensions. For more information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see PostgreSQL extensions.

• Compute: Updated the versions for the following PostgreSQL extensions:

  • Updated the address_standardizer, address_standardizer_data_us, postgis, postgis_raster, postgis_tiger_geocoder, postgis_topology extensions to version 3.3.2.
  • Updated the plv8, plls, plcoffee extensions to 3.1.5.
  • Updated the h3_pg extension to 4.1.2.

  Updating an extension version requires running an ALTER EXTENSION <extension_name> UPDATE TO <new_version> statement. For example, to update the postgis_topology extension to the newly supported version, run this statement:

  ALTER EXTENSION postgis_topology UPDATE TO '3.3.2';

• Pageserver: Corrected the storage size metrics calculation to ensure that only active branches are counted.

• Proxy: Enabled OpenTelemetry tracing to capture all incoming requests. This change enables Neon to perform an end-to-end trace when a new connection is established.

What's new

• Compute: Added support for the PostgreSQL pgvector, plls and plcoffee extensions. For more information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see PostgreSQL extensions.
• Proxy: Significantly reduced network latencies for WebSocket and pooled connections by implementing caching mechanism for compute node connection information and enabling the TCP_NODELAY protocol option. The TCP_NODELAY option causes segments to be sent as soon as possible, even if there is only a small amount of data. For more information, refer to the TCP protocol man page.
• Pageserver: Added an experimental feature that automatically evicts layer files from Pageservers to optimize local storage space usage. When enabled for a project, Pageservers periodically check the access timestamps of the project's layer files. If the most recent layer file access is further in the past than a configurable threshold, the Pageserver removes the layer file from local storage. The authoritative copy of the layer file remains in S3. A Pageserver can download a layer file from S3 on-demand if it is needed again, to reconstruct a page version for a client request, for example.

What's new

• Compute: Added support for the PostgreSQL postgis-sfcgal extension. For more information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see PostgreSQL extensions.

• Compute: Added support for International Components for Unicode (ICU), which permits defining collation objects that use ICU as the collation provider. For example:

  CREATE COLLATION german (provider = icu, locale = 'de');

Features

• Compute: Added support for the the PostgreSQL unit extension. For more information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see PostgreSQL extensions.
• Compute: Removed logic that updated roles each time a Neon compute instance was restarted. Roles were updated on each restart to address a password-related backward compatibility issue that is no longer relevant.
• Pageserver: Reimplemented the layer map used to track the data layers in a branch. The layer map now uses an immutable binary search tree (BST) data structure, which improves data layer lookup performance over the previous R-tree implementation. The data required to reconstruct page versions is stored as data layers in Neon Pageservers.
• Pageserver: Changed the garbage collection (gc) interval from 100 seconds to 60 minutes. This change reduces the frequency of layer map locks.
• Pageserver: Implemented an asynchronous pipe for communication with the Write Ahead Log (WAL) redo process, which helps improves OLAP query performance.

Bug Fixes

• Compute: Fixed a compute instance restart error. When a compute instance was restarted after a role was deleted in the console, the restart operation failed with a "role does not exist" error while attempting to reassign the objects owned by the deleted role.

What's new

• Compute: Added support for several PostgreSQL extensions. Newly supported extensions include:
  • bloom
  • pgrowlocks
  • intagg
  • pgstattuple
  • earthdistance
  • address_standardizer
  • address_standardizer_data_us
  For more information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see PostgreSQL extensions.
• Compute: Updated the list of PostgreSQL client libraries and runtimes that Neon tests for connection support. The pg8000 Python PostgreSQL driver, version 1.29.3 and higher, now supports connecting to Neon.
• Compute: Added statistics to EXPLAIN that show prefetch hits and misses for sequential scans.
• Proxy: Updated the error message that is reported when attempting to connect from a client or driver that does not support Server Name Indication (SNI). For more information about the SNI requirement, see Connect from old clients. Previously, the error message indicated that the "Project ID" is not specified. The error message now states that the "Endpoint ID" is not specified. Connecting to Neon with a Project ID remains supported for backward compatibility, but connecting with an Endpoint ID is now the recommended connection method. For general information about connecting to Neon, see Connect from any application.

What's new

• Pageserver: Added support for on-demand download of layer files from cold storage. Layer files contain the data required reconstruct any version of a data page. On-demand download enables Neon to quickly distribute data across Pageservers and recover from local Pageserver failures. This feature augments Neon's storage capability by allowing data to be transferred efficiently from cold storage to Pageservers whenever the data is needed.

What's new

• Compute: Added support for sequential scan prefetch, which reduces round trips between Computes and Pageservers. Sequential scan prefetch allows fetching numerous pages at once instead of one by one, improving I/O performance for operations such as table scans.
• Compute: Added support for the pg_prewarm PostgreSQL extension, which utilizes the above-mentioned sequential scan prefetch feature. The pg_prewarm extension provides a convenient way to load data into the PostgreSQL buffer cache after a cold start. For information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see PostgreSQL extensions.
• Compute: Updated supported PostgreSQL versions to 14.6 and 15.1, respectively.
• Pageserver: Updated the storage_sync operation to make it more robust and reliable while syncing files between Pageservers and S3.
• Safekeeper: Replaced etcd subscriptions with a custom Neon storage broker. The storage broker allows Safekeepers and Pageservers to learn which storage node holds a timeline and the status of a timeline while avoiding too many connections between nodes.

What's new

• Pageserver, Safekeeper, Compute, and Proxy: Reduced the size of Neon storage binaries by 50% by removing dependency debug symbols from the release build.
• Pageserver: Moved the Write-Ahead Log (WAL) redo process code from Neon's postgres repository to the neon repository and created a separate wal_redo binary in order to reduce the amount of change in the postgres repository codebase.
• Compute: Updated prefetching support to store requests and responses in a ring buffer instead of a queue, which enables using prefetches from many relations concurrently.
• Pageserver and Safekeeper: Removed support for the --daemonize option from the CLI process that starts the Pageserver and Safekeeper storage components. The required library is no longer being maintained and the option was only used in our test environment.
• Pageserver: Added a tenant sizing model and an endpoint for retrieving the tenant size.

What's new

• Compute: Added support for PostgreSQL 15.0 and its PostgreSQL extensions. For information about supported extensions, see Available PostgreSQL extensions.
• Compute: Disabled the wal_log_hints parameter, which is the default PostgreSQL setting. The Pageserver-related issue that required enabling wal_log_hints has been addressed, and enabling wal_log_hints is no longer necessary.
• Pageserver: Added a timeline state field to the TimelineInfo struct that is returned by the timelines internal management API endpoint. Timeline state information improves observability and communication between Pageserver modules.

What's new

• Compute: Fixed an issue that prevented creating a database when the specified database name included trailing spaces.
• Pageserver: Fixed an INSERT ... ON CONFLICT handling issue for speculative Write-Ahead Log (WAL) record inserts. Under certain load conditions, records added with INSERT ... ON CONFLICT could be replayed incorrectly.
• Pageserver: Fixed a Free Space Map (FSM) and Visibility Map (VM) page reconstruction issue that caused compute nodes to start slowly under certain workloads.
• Pageserver: Fixed a garbage collection (GC) issue that could lead to a database failure under high load.
• Pageserver: Improved query performance for larger databases by improving R-tree layer map search. The envelope for each layer is now remembered so that it does not have to be reconstructed for each call.

What's new

• Pageserver: Increased the default compaction_period setting to 20 seconds to reduce the frequency of polling that is performed to determine if compaction is required. The frequency of polling with the previous setting of 1 could result in excessive CPU consumption when there are numerous tenants and projects.
• Pageserver: Added initial support for online tenant relocation.
• Pageserver: Added support for multiple PostgreSQL versions.
• Compute: Added support for the h3_pg and plv8 PostgreSQL extensions. For information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see Available PostgreSQL extensions.
• Compute: Added support for a future implementation of sequential scan prefetch, which improves I/O performance for operations such as table scans.
• Compute: Moved the backpressure throttling algorithm to the Neon extension to minimize changes to the Neon PostgreSQL core code, and added a backpressure_throttling_time function that returns the total time spent throttling since the system was started.
• Proxy: Improved error messages and logging.

What's new

• Compute: Updated the PostgreSQL version to 14.5.
• Compute: Added support for the PostGIS extension, version 3.3.0. For information about PostgreSQL extensions supported by Neon, see Available PostgreSQL extensions.
• Proxy: Added support for forwarding the options, application_name, and replication connection parameters to compute nodes.

What's new

• Compute: Installed the uuid-ossp extension binaries, which provide functions for generating universally unique identifiers (UUIDs). CREATE EXTENSION "uuid-ossp" is now supported. For information about extensions supported by Neon, see Available PostgreSQL extensions.
• Compute: Added logging for compute node initialization failure during the 'basebackup' stage.
• Pageserver: Avoided busy looping when deletion from cloud storage is skipped due to failed upload tasks.
• Pageserver: Merged the 'wal_receiver' endpoint with 'timeline_detail', in the internal management API.
• Pageserver: Added reporting of the physical size with the tenant status, in the internal management API.

What's new

• Safekeeper: Added support for backing up Write-Ahead Logs (WAL) to S3 storage for disaster recovery.
• Safekeeper: Added support for downloading WAL from S3 storage on demand.
• Safekeeper: Switched to etcd subscriptions to keep Pageservers up to date with the Safekeeper status.
• Safekeeper: Implemented JSON Web Token (JWT) authentication in the Safekeeper HTTP API.
• Proxy: Added support for propagating SASL/SCRAM PostgreSQL authentication errors to clients.
• Compute: Updated the PostgreSQL version to 14.4.
• Compute: Renamed the following custom configuration parameters:
  • zenith.page_server_connstring to neon.pageserver_connstring
  • zenith.zenith_tenant to neon.tenant_id
  • zenith.zenith_timeline to neon.timeline_id
  • zenith.max_cluster_size to neon.max_cluster_size
  • wal_acceptors to safekeepers
• Control Plane: Renamed zenith_admin role to cloud_admin.
• Pageserver: Implemented a page service fullbackup endpoint that works like basebackup but also sends relational files.
• Pageserver: Added support for importing a base backup taken from a standalone PostgreSQL instance or another Pageserver using psql copy.
• Pageserver: Fixed the database size calculation to count Visibility Maps (VMs) and Free Space Maps (FSMs) in addition to the main fork of the relation.
• Pageserver: Updated the timeline size reported when DROP DATABASE is executed.
• Pageserver: Decreased the number of threads by running gc and compaction in a blocking tokio thread pool.
• Pageserver: Switched to per-tenant attach/detach. Download operations of all timelines for one tenant are now grouped together so that branches can be used safely with attach/detach.

Bug fixes

• Compute: Enabled the use of the CREATE EXTENSION statement for users that are not database owners.
• Safekeeper: Fixed the walreceiver connection selection mechanism:
  • Reconnecting to a Safekeeper immediately after it fails is now avoided by limiting candidates to those with the fewest connection attempts.
  • Increased the max_lsn_wal_lag default setting to avoid constant reconnections during normal work.
  • Fixed wal_connection_attempts maintenance, preventing busy reconnection loops.