Can I connect Xata to my existing RDS / Aurora / Cloud SQL database?

[dascalescuro]

Yes. You can create a “production clone” on the Xata platform. Your production database stays where it is, and you get CoW branching from the Xata clone. The replication itself can be done periodically (e.g. nightly) or continuously, via logical replication. Our open source project, pgstream, supports Postgres to Postgres replication including DDL changes.

This means:

• Your production setup doesn't change at all. A read replica can be used to stream the data.
• Branches contain real production data (you can apply anonymization rules via pgstream).
• The replica stays in sync, so new branches always reflect recent production state.

Requirements:

• Source database must support logical replication (RDS and Aurora support this with wal_level = logical, Cloud SQL supports it with a flag)
• Network connectivity between your source and the Kubernetes cluster running Xata

What this looks like in practice:

1. Deploy Xata OSS on your Kubernetes cluster
2. Configure replication from your production Postgres
3. Create branches on demand for CI, staging, agents, or dev environments

Each branch gets its own Postgres endpoint with full read/write access. Changes on a branch don't affect the parent or other branches.