Shaun M. Thomas has been working with PostgreSQL since late 2000. He is a frequent contributor to the PostgreSQL Performance and General mailing lists, assisting other DBAs with the knowledge he's gained over the years. In 2011 and 2012, he gave presentations at the Postgres Open conference on topics such as handling extreme throughput, high availability, server redundancy, and failover techniques. Most recently, he has contributed the Shard Manager extension and the walctl WAL management suite. Currently, he serves as the database architect at OptionsHouse, an online options brokerage with a PostgreSQL cluster that handles almost 2 billion queries per day. Many of the techniques used in this book were developed specifically for this extreme environment. He believes that PostgreSQL has a stupendous future ahead, and he can't wait to see the advancements subsequent versions will bring.