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AWS deployment guidelines

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Self-managed Materialize requires: a Kubernetes (v1.31+) cluster; PostgreSQL as a metadata database; blob storage; and a license key.

As a general guideline, we recommend:

  • ARM-based CPU
  • A 1:8 ratio of vCPU to GiB memory.
  • At least a 2:1 ratio of GiB local instance storage to GiB memory when using swap.

When operating in AWS, we recommend the following instances:

EC2 Instances
r8g, r7g, and r6g families when running without local disk.
r7gd and r6gd families (and r8gd once available) when running with local disk. Recommended for production.

Locally-attached NVMe storage

Configuring swap on nodes to use locally-attached NVMe storage allows Materialize to spill to disk when operating on datasets larger than main memory. This setup can provide significant cost savings and provides a more graceful degradation rather than OOMing. Network-attached storage (like EBS volumes) can significantly degrade performance and is not supported.

Swap support

The Materialize Terraform module supports configuring swap out of the box.

Self-managed Materialize uses an external PostgreSQL metadata database to store its catalog and to coordinate the state of the objects it keeps up to date. Every durable object that updates continuously (materialized views, sources, sinks, and tables) produces a steady stream of small writes to the metadata database. Metadata-database load therefore scales with the number of continuously-updating objects, not with the volume of data flowing through them.

NOTE: The sizing figures below assume the persist_pg_consensus_read_committed system parameter is enabled. Enable it before sizing against these numbers. Materialize version v26.33+ is required to set this parameter.

Safe operating point

The primary factor that dictates the size of the metadata database is the number of durable objects Materialize keeps continuously fresh (materialized views, sources, sinks, and tables). Data volume, the query rate against Materialize, and cluster size do not materially change metadata database load. For example, a larger cluster running the same number of materialized views places roughly the same load on the metadata database.

It is recommended that you size the metadata database so that its steady-state CPU stays below 60%. The headroom between ~60% and full utilization provides capacity to absorb everyday load variance, background database maintenance, and Materialize zero-downtime upgrades.

RDS instance types

For the RDS PostgreSQL metadata database, we recommend:

  • Graviton (ARM) memory-optimized instances (the r6g / r7g families).
  • Multi-AZ for production.
  • gp3 storage.
Deployment size Instance vCPU / memory Continuously-active objects (~60% CPU)
Entry / small production db.r6g.large 2 / 16 GiB ~4,500
Recommended default db.r6g.2xlarge 8 / 64 GiB ~18,000

TLS

When running with TLS in production, run with certificates from an official Certificate Authority (CA) rather than self-signed certificates.

Upgrading guideline

Whe upgrading:

  • Always check the version-specific upgrade notes.

  • Always upgrade the operator first and ensure version compatibility between the operator and the Materialize instance you are upgrading to.

  • Always upgrade your Materialize instances after upgrading the operator to ensure compatibility.

Karpenter node expiry

We recommend setting expire_after to Never on the Materialize nodepool since node expiry is not a voluntary disruption. With any other value, Karpenter removes nodes that reach their configured lifetime even if they run pods annotated with karpenter.sh/do-not-disrupt. This can cause downtime unless you gracefully roll the nodes first. The Materialize Terraform modules default expire_after to Never.

Karpenter termination grace period

We recommend leaving termination_grace_period unset on nodepools that run Materialize workloads. When this value is set, Karpenter terminates nodes after the configured grace period following any change to the nodepool configuration, even if they run pods annotated with karpenter.sh/do-not-disrupt.

Before v6.0.0, the modules set termination_grace_period to 300s. If you are using a version earlier than v6.0.0, upgrade to v6.0.0 using the v6.0.0 upgrade notes. Starting in v6.0.0, the Materialize Terraform modules leave termination_grace_period unset by default.

Node pool resizing

The VM type of a Kubernetes node pool is immutable on EKS, AKS, and GKE, so changing it triggers a destroy + create that fails while Materialize pods are still running on the pool. The supported pattern is to add a second pool with the new VM type, roll out the Materialize instance so new pods land on it, and then drop the old pool.

For the full procedure, see Resize node pools.

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