MSSQL vs PostgreSQL for Bitbucket Data Center

Matthew Pease

I am proposing Bitbucket "Data Center" to my company. I am curious about experiences with MSSQL vs PostgreSQL. According to docs, the Bitbucket "Data Center" product itself needs to be on Linux, but when it comes to the shared DB, well, my company is primarily a Microsoft shop so the preference is automatically going to be MSSQL. However, if powerful arguments can be made for PostgreSQL, like performance differences, or hassles with Bitbucket upgrades or support or what-have-you, I might be able to sell them PostgreSQL. All thoughts welcome.

Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting]

MS SQL Server is a supported database, assuming you use a supported version and set it up in a supported way with the correct collation. If that's your DBA strength, I would suggest going that route.  Postgres is what Atlassian tests with most, so you may be at slightly greater risk of database related problems using SQL Server, but I wouldn't expect any ill effects.  We work with plenty of people running environments similar to what you are proposing.  Make sure you read the docs on the load balancer requirements and remember that you need a technology that supports HTTP(S) and TCP reverse proxying. I would also recommend measuring your storage performance on the shared storage volume before you migrate.  Bitbucket is a large diskio consumer and if your shared storage is slow, Bitbucket will start queuing requests. If you plan to be highly available, which is generally the reason go with Data Center, you need to make sure you address availability in all parts of the application.  You need a redundant load balancer, redundant application (both Bitbucket and Elastic Search,) redundant shared storage and redundant database. It's not a trivial task to get all this set up, so be sure to test everything fully before commuting to service level agreements. Also, make sure you are backing up Bitbucket with the backup client! You'll have to use the DIY client for Data Center.

If you get stuck, you might want to reach out to an Atlassian Solution Partner to help get things set up in a solid way.  Data Center is quite a bit more complicated to set up than Server.