Quickstart for Managed Postgres

Private preview in ClickHouse Cloud

ClickHouse Managed Postgres is enterprise-grade Postgres backed by NVMe storage, delivering up to 10x faster performance for disk-bound workloads compared to network-attached storage like EBS. This quickstart is divided into two parts:

• Part 1: Get started with NVMe Postgres and experience its performance
• Part 2: Unlock real-time analytics by integrating with ClickHouse

Managed Postgres is currently available on AWS in several regions and is free during private preview.

In this quickstart, you will:

• Create a Managed Postgres instance with NVMe-powered performance
• Load 1 million sample events and see NVMe speed in action
• Run queries and experience low-latency performance
• Replicate data to ClickHouse for real-time analytics
• Query ClickHouse directly from Postgres using pg_clickhouse

Part 1: Get Started with NVMe Postgres

Create a database

To create a new Managed Postgres service, click on the New service button in the service list of the Cloud Console. You should then be able to select Postgres as the database type.

Enter a name for your database instance and click on Create service. You will be taken to the overview page.

Your Managed Postgres instance will be provisioned and ready for use in 3-5 minutes.

Connect to your database

In the sidebar on the left, you will see a Connect button. Click on it to view your connection details and connection strings in multiple formats.

Copy the psql connection string and connect to your database. You can also use any Postgres-compatible client such as DBeaver, or any application library.

Experience NVMe performance

Let's see NVMe-powered performance in action. First, enable timing in psql to measure query execution:

\timing

Create two sample tables for events and users:

CREATE TABLE events (
   event_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
   event_name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
   event_type VARCHAR(100),
   event_timestamp TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
   event_data JSONB,
   user_id INT,
   user_ip INET,
   is_active BOOLEAN DEFAULT TRUE,
   created_at TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
   updated_at TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

CREATE TABLE users (
   user_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
   name VARCHAR(100),
   country VARCHAR(50),
   platform VARCHAR(50)
);

Now, insert 1 million events and watch the NVMe speed:

INSERT INTO events (event_name, event_type, event_timestamp, event_data, user_id, user_ip)
SELECT
   'Event ' || gs::text AS event_name,
   CASE
       WHEN random() < 0.5 THEN 'click'
       WHEN random() < 0.75 THEN 'view'
       WHEN random() < 0.9 THEN 'purchase'
       WHEN random() < 0.98 THEN 'signup'
       ELSE 'logout'
   END AS event_type,
   NOW() - INTERVAL '1 day' * (gs % 365) AS event_timestamp,
   jsonb_build_object('key', 'value' || gs::text, 'additional_info', 'info_' || (gs % 100)::text) AS event_data,
   GREATEST(1, LEAST(1000, FLOOR(POWER(random(), 2) * 1000) + 1)) AS user_id,
   ('192.168.1.' || ((gs % 254) + 1))::inet AS user_ip
FROM
   generate_series(1, 1000000) gs;

INSERT 0 1000000
Time: 3596.542 ms (00:03.597)

NVMe Performance

1 million rows with JSONB data inserted in under 4 seconds. On traditional cloud databases using network-attached storage like EBS, this same operation typically takes 2-3x longer due to network round-trip latency and IOPS throttling. NVMe storage eliminates these bottlenecks by keeping storage physically attached to the compute.

Performance varies based on instance size, current load, and data characteristics.

Insert 1,000 users:

INSERT INTO users (name, country, platform)
SELECT
    first_names[first_idx] || ' ' || last_names[last_idx] AS name,
    CASE
        WHEN random() < 0.25 THEN 'India'
        WHEN random() < 0.5 THEN 'USA'
        WHEN random() < 0.7 THEN 'Germany'
        WHEN random() < 0.85 THEN 'China'
        ELSE 'Other'
    END AS country,
    CASE
        WHEN random() < 0.2 THEN 'iOS'
        WHEN random() < 0.4 THEN 'Android'
        WHEN random() < 0.6 THEN 'Web'
        WHEN random() < 0.75 THEN 'Windows'
        WHEN random() < 0.9 THEN 'MacOS'
        ELSE 'Linux'
    END AS platform
FROM
    generate_series(1, 1000) AS seq
    CROSS JOIN LATERAL (
        SELECT
            array['Alice', 'Bob', 'Charlie', 'Diana', 'Eve', 'Frank', 'Grace', 'Hank', 'Ivy', 'Jack', 'Liam', 'Olivia', 'Noah', 'Emma', 'Sophia', 'Benjamin', 'Isabella', 'Lucas', 'Mia', 'Amelia', 'Aarav', 'Riya', 'Arjun', 'Ananya', 'Wei', 'Li', 'Huan', 'Mei', 'Hans', 'Klaus', 'Greta', 'Sofia'] AS first_names,
            array['Smith', 'Johnson', 'Williams', 'Brown', 'Jones', 'Garcia', 'Miller', 'Davis', 'Martinez', 'Taylor', 'Anderson', 'Thomas', 'Jackson', 'White', 'Harris', 'Martin', 'Thompson', 'Moore', 'Lee', 'Perez', 'Sharma', 'Patel', 'Gupta', 'Reddy', 'Zhang', 'Wang', 'Chen', 'Liu', 'Schmidt', 'Müller', 'Weber', 'Fischer'] AS last_names,
            1 + (seq % 32) AS first_idx,
            1 + ((seq / 32)::int % 32) AS last_idx
    ) AS names;

Run queries on your data

Now let's run some queries to see how fast Postgres responds with NVMe storage.

Aggregate 1 million events by type:

SELECT event_type, COUNT(*) as count 
FROM events 
GROUP BY event_type 
ORDER BY count DESC;

 event_type | count  
------------+--------
 click      | 499523
 view       | 375644
 purchase   | 112473
 signup     |  12117
 logout     |    243
(5 rows)

Time: 114.883 ms

Query with JSONB filtering and date range:

SELECT COUNT(*) 
FROM events 
WHERE event_timestamp > NOW() - INTERVAL '30 days'
  AND event_data->>'additional_info' LIKE 'info_5%';

 count 
-------
  9042
(1 row)

Time: 109.294 ms

Join events with users:

SELECT u.country, COUNT(*) as events, AVG(LENGTH(e.event_data::text))::int as avg_json_size
FROM events e
JOIN users u ON e.user_id = u.user_id
GROUP BY u.country
ORDER BY events DESC;

 country | events | avg_json_size 
---------+--------+---------------
 USA     | 383748 |            52
 India   | 255990 |            52
 Germany | 223781 |            52
 China   | 127754 |            52
 Other   |   8727 |            52
(5 rows)

Time: 224.670 ms

Your Postgres is ready

At this point, you have a fully functional, high-performance Postgres database ready for your transactional workloads.

Continue to Part 2 to see how native ClickHouse integration can supercharge your analytics.

---

Part 2: Add Real-Time Analytics with ClickHouse

While Postgres excels at transactional workloads (OLTP), ClickHouse is purpose-built for analytical queries (OLAP) on large datasets. By integrating the two, you get the best of both worlds:

• Postgres for your application's transactional data (inserts, updates, point lookups)
• ClickHouse for sub-second analytics on billions of rows

This section shows you how to replicate your Postgres data to ClickHouse and query it seamlessly.

Setup ClickHouse integration

Now that we have tables and data in Postgres, let's replicate the tables to ClickHouse for analytics. We start by clicking on ClickHouse integration in the sidebar. Then you can click on Replicate data in ClickHouse.

In the form that follows, you can enter a name for your integration and select an existing ClickHouse instance to replicate to. If you don't have a ClickHouse instance yet, you can create one directly from this form.

Important

Make sure the ClickHouse service you select is Running before proceeding.

Click on Next, to be taken to the table picker. Here all you need to do is:

• Select a ClickHouse database to replicate to.
• Expand the public schema and select the users and events table we created earlier.
• Click on Replicate data to ClickHouse.

The replication process will start, and you will be taken to the integration overview page. Being the first integration, it can take 2-3 minutes to setup the initial infrastructure. In the meantime let's check out the new pg_clickhouse extension.

Query ClickHouse from Postgres

The pg_clickhouse extension lets you query ClickHouse data directly from Postgres using standard SQL. This means your application can use Postgres as a unified query layer for both transactional and analytical data. See the full documentation for details.

Enable the extension:

CREATE EXTENSION pg_clickhouse;

Then, create a foreign server connection to ClickHouse. Use the http driver with port 8443 for secure connections:

CREATE SERVER ch FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER clickhouse_fdw
       OPTIONS(driver 'http', host '<clickhouse_cloud_host>', dbname '<database_name>', port '8443');

Replace <clickhouse_cloud_host> with your ClickHouse hostname and <database_name> with the database you selected during replication setup. You can find the hostname in your ClickHouse service by clicking Connect in the sidebar.

Now, we map the Postgres user to the ClickHouse service's credentials:

CREATE USER MAPPING FOR CURRENT_USER SERVER ch 
OPTIONS (user 'default', password '<clickhouse_password>');

Now import the ClickHouse tables into a Postgres schema:

CREATE SCHEMA organization;
IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA "<database_name>" FROM SERVER ch INTO organization;

Replace <database_name> with the same database name you used when creating the server.

You can now see all the ClickHouse tables in your Postgres client:

\det+ organization.*

See your analytics in action

Let's check back on the integration page. You should see that the initial replication is complete. Click on the integration name to view details.

Click on the service name to open the ClickHouse console and see your replicated tables.

Compare Postgres vs ClickHouse performance

Now let's run some analytical queries and compare performance between Postgres and ClickHouse. Note that replicated tables use the naming convention public_<table_name>.

Query 1: Top users by activity

This query finds the most active users with multiple aggregations:

-- Via ClickHouse
SELECT 
    user_id,
    COUNT(*) as total_events,
    COUNT(DISTINCT event_type) as unique_event_types,
    SUM(CASE WHEN event_type = 'purchase' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) as purchases,
    MIN(event_timestamp) as first_event,
    MAX(event_timestamp) as last_event
FROM organization.public_events
GROUP BY user_id
ORDER BY total_events DESC
LIMIT 10;

 user_id | total_events | unique_event_types | purchases |        first_event         |         last_event         
---------+--------------+--------------------+-----------+----------------------------+----------------------------
       1 |        31439 |                  5 |      3551 | 2025-01-22 22:40:45.612281 | 2026-01-21 22:40:45.612281
       2 |        13235 |                  4 |      1492 | 2025-01-22 22:40:45.612281 | 2026-01-21 22:40:45.612281
...
(10 rows)

Time: 163.898 ms   -- ClickHouse
Time: 554.621 ms   -- Same query on Postgres

Query 2: User engagement by country and platform

This query joins events with users and computes engagement metrics:

-- Via ClickHouse
SELECT 
    u.country,
    u.platform,
    COUNT(DISTINCT e.user_id) as users,
    COUNT(*) as total_events,
    ROUND(COUNT(*)::numeric / COUNT(DISTINCT e.user_id), 2) as events_per_user,
    SUM(CASE WHEN e.event_type = 'purchase' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) as purchases
FROM organization.public_events e
JOIN organization.public_users u ON e.user_id = u.user_id
GROUP BY u.country, u.platform
ORDER BY total_events DESC
LIMIT 10;

 country | platform | users | total_events | events_per_user | purchases 
---------+----------+-------+--------------+-----------------+-----------
 USA     | Android  |   115 |       109977 |             956 |     12388
 USA     | Web      |   108 |       105057 |             972 |     11847
 USA     | iOS      |    83 |        84594 |            1019 |      9565
 Germany | Android  |    85 |        77966 |             917 |      8852
 India   | Android  |    80 |        68095 |             851 |      7724
...
(10 rows)

Time: 170.353 ms   -- ClickHouse
Time: 1245.560 ms  -- Same query on Postgres

Performance comparison:

Query	Postgres (NVMe)	ClickHouse (via pg_clickhouse)	Speedup
Top users (5 aggregations)	555 ms	164 ms	3.4x
User engagement (JOIN + aggregations)	1,246 ms	170 ms	7.3x

When to use ClickHouse

Even on this 1M row dataset, ClickHouse delivers 3-7x faster performance on complex analytical queries with JOINs and multiple aggregations. The difference becomes even more dramatic at larger scales (100M+ rows), where ClickHouse's columnar storage and vectorized execution can deliver 10-100x speedups.

Query times vary based on instance size, network latency between services, data characteristics, and current load.

Cleanup

To delete the resources created in this quickstart:

1. First, delete the ClickPipe integration from the ClickHouse service
2. Then, delete the Managed Postgres instance from the Cloud Console