Database snapshots or clones for staging and testing.

Hi all.

I have the following scenario I want to accomplish.

In order to test a new branch of code I want to create a snapshot of the
live database into a testing database. The code will be deployed after that
and it may run some migrations which will change the schema of the
database. The code is then tested using both automated testing and user
acceptance testing (this stage may take hours or perhaps even days).
During that time the users can change the data. After the branch is
accepted by the users we would like to "reset" the database to the way it
was before and perhaps test another branch.

One obvious way to do this would be to do a backup/restore but as the
database grows larger that process is taking too long. It would be great
if we could do a streaming replica and then pause the replication, run our
tests, and then reset the database to the point at which the replication
was paused and restart the replication. Is that possible?

Another option would be the try and leverage PITR. Create a checkpoint,
run the migrations do your tests, roll back to everything to the start.
This does seem possible to me although of course I am still stuck with the
backup restore problem.

Anything I missed? Surely there is a super clever trick I am missing here.