I agree And more to the point, learning how to "handroll" Postgres could be beneficial. You could have learned about options for limiting the amount of memory,

I agree And more to the point, learning how to "handroll" Postgres could be beneficial. You could have learned about options for limiting the amount of memory, etc Sure, managed is easier and use it when you can afford it easily. But before that, it's better to see how things are going (mem usage, disk usage, bottlenecks, etc)