Most of your questions can be answered within a link or two from the postgresql.org home page. Who uses it: http://www.postgresql.org/about/users http://www.po

Most of your questions can be answered within a link or two from the postgresql.org home page. Who uses it: http://www.postgresql.org/about/users http://www.postgresql.org/about/users High Availability http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/high-availability.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/high-availabi... It's a bit more complex than setting up a mysql cluster, but it's also less likely to be squirrely when things go sour. Also, having a good understanding of how the replication solution you are using works and why, means you can avoid some of the pitfalls it brings with. PostgreSQL is a very powerful tool, to use it well requires understanding and skill and much depends on the workload of a given installation. Fortunately it's performant enough out of the box that you can get by with just putting it on a box and using the hell out of it at first. But at some point you will need to dedicate some attention to tuning it.