Databases

Lucity provisions PostgreSQL databases using CloudNativePG (CNPG), the leading Kubernetes operator for PostgreSQL and a CNCF project. Each database is a CNPG Cluster custom resource: production-grade, with automated failover, replication, and point-in-time recovery built in.

No managed database service, no external dependency, no surprise bills. Just PostgreSQL running where your application runs.

Add a PostgreSQL Database

Create a database through the GraphQL API:

mutation {
  createDatabase(input: {
    projectId: "myapp"
    name: "main"
    version: "16"
    instances: 1
    size: "10Gi"
  }) {
    name
    version
    instances
    size
  }
}

Lucity creates a CNPG Cluster with the specified configuration. The operator handles the rest: initialization, user creation, connection pooling, health checks. Under the hood, this adds a database definition to databases.postgres in your GitOps repo's values.yaml.

Configuration Options

For production environments, you'll typically override instances in your environment-specific values:

# environments/production/values.yaml
databases:
  postgres:
    main:
      instances: 3
      size: 50Gi

Connect From Your Application

CNPG automatically creates a Kubernetes Secret containing your database credentials. The secret includes the full connection URI, individual fields (host, port, user, password, database name), and a pgpass file.

Your application reads the connection string from environment variables. In your service's config, reference the secret:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:password@main-rw.myapp-development.svc.cluster.local:5432/app

The namespace follows the {project}-{environment} convention, so adjust for your target environment.

The -rw suffix routes to the primary instance (read-write). CNPG also creates -ro (read-only replicas) and -r (any replica) services for read scaling.

What Happens on Eject

You get a standard CNPG Cluster manifest. It works with any CNPG operator installation. No Lucity-specific configuration, no proprietary annotations. Install the CNPG operator on your cluster, apply the manifest, and your database runs exactly as it did before.