Re: Request for Feedback on PostgreSQL HA + Load Balancing Architecture

On Wed, 23 Jul 2025 12:13:26 +0100
Achilleas Mantzios <a(dot)mantzios(at)cloud(dot)gatewaynet(dot)com> wrote:
…
> Have you consider pgpool-ii ?  I know most support / service companies
> push for patroni, and manually separating read / write traffic from
> within the app,

Indeed

> but I still find pgpool's query routing very nice.

Using Pgpool for HA is a no go in my opinion. Pgpool HA requires the
DBA/sysadmin to deal alone with the real high availability challenges. Pgpool
doesn't handle the HA complexity itself, it stays quite "naive". It requires the
sysadmin/DBA to mess with the complexity to keep the cluster safe from
corruption. In other word, implement the HA safety stack in bash yourself. This
is partly true for repmgr as well last time I checked.

Don't implement Patroni or Pacemaker yourself in a collection of "action
scripts" triggered by a naive HA stack. Some people tried, some clusters has
been corrupted.

Pgpool for routing and/or pooling is an acceptable solution. Of course, it comes
with its drawbacks and some inefficiences, that's why most support/service
companies avoid it when possible. But depending on the context, it could be OK.

Regards,