Heavybit Show & Tell: Canary Releases & Scaling PostgreSQL w/ LaunchDarkly CEO Edith Harbaugh

A few months ago we introduced our two newest members to the Heavybit membership: LaunchDarkly and CitusData. In a recent Heavybit Show & Tell night, we had a chance to hear from founders at both companies to hear about some of their latest thinking and releases.

In this presentation, LaunchDarkly CEO Edith Harbaugh talks about why and how to do canary releases — a best practice in continuous delivery. The canary release (aka canary deployment or canary launch) entails rolling out features to a small number of users to assess the reaction of the overall system. The method is one currently employed by large organizations like Nike. In this demo, Harbaugh shows off LaunchDarkly’s feature-flags-as-a-service capabilities and the process for a canary release. More info on how and why to do a canary release is available on the LaunchDarkly blog.



With the proliferation of big data and the need to manage it, comes the new problem of database fragmentation by workload and data type. In this video, CitusData’s Ozgun Erdogan discusses the trends in big data management, what makes PostgreSQL unique, and how CitusData scales it. Part of his presentation includes a look at how CitusData manages all of the customer-facing analytics for more than 2M CloudFlare customers. A more indepth look at the case study is available on the CitusData blog.

For more Heavybit Show & Tell videos check out our past talks.