We constantly bat this around the office, and the question continues to come up. How do you deal with PostgreSQL replication? I'm not even necessarily talking about advanced clusters, just keeping it simple with Master-Slave, Master-MultiSlave, and Master-Master. I find that setting it up for MySQL is typically pretty simple. Failover is straightforward if not perfect, especially for how easy it is to configure. We've played with Slony, but it's a bit too hands on (schema changes require intervention, new databases require intervention, etc). PGPool2 was pretty nice, until a node went down and we couldn't find a graceful way (other than bringing everything down and reseeding the fallen node) to get replication back in sync. Basically here's what I'm typically looking for:
- Easy setup (I'll settle for difficult setup, but easy to expand)
- Simplistic failover
- Bringing a fallen node back in just requires time (i.e. like mysql. Server goes down, you bring it up, and wait for replication to catch up)
- Schema changes don't break replication
- Adding a new database to the server is seamless (i.e. like mysql, you can replicate a whole DB server, so a new database is created on the master, it automatically propagates to the slave)
MySQL handles most of these fairly well, but I hold a certain fondness for PostgreSQL. Besides, we have some situations where it's our only option, and we'd like to add replication to the mix. What are you using currently, and how do you feel about your solution? This isn't a MySQL versus PostgreSQL post, I promise, because that's not what I'm trying to start. :)
