PostgreSQL Sequence Overflow: Prevention and Recovery at Scale

The 2200H error represents a critical production risk for high-volume PostgreSQL systems relying on SERIAL primary keys, which are limited to approximately 2.1 billion values. Without proactive monitoring, sequence exhaustion can cause sudden insert failures across your entire application. This guide provides actionable solutions—from immediate MAXVALUE adjustments to long-term BIGINT and IDENTITY column migrations—to prevent this failure at scale.