Scalable cluster

Hi guys,

I'm looking into setting up an HA scalable DB cluster.
So far my tests with streaming replication proof that it is very very good
indeed.

However, problem seems to be on the connection pooling side. Ideally, we
would love to have single point of connection to the cluster, but I do
realise that it might not be feasible.

So far I've been testing pgpool-II 3.2.3 and 3 DB servers. And as much as
I'm impressed by postgresql itself. pgpool simply fails on pretty much
every front. That is, in terms of scalability, running dbbench against it,
proves to be much slower then direct connection to the master. It also goes
into strange states when you overallocate connections, etc. Not really
something I'd trust on a production server.

I don't know of any other pooling solution that would be capable of
handling the job, but focus only on the task of pooling (pgpool's fault
probably is that it is trying to be jack of all trades) in HA replicated
scenario.

What is out there, free or paid - that would solve an HA DB Cluster running
Postgresql (ideally 9.2), that you guys could suggest ?

Personally, I think that having single connection point DB Cluster is not
going to be ideal solution anyway. So question is, how would you guys go
about designing a cluster that handles Java/C/C++ applications connecting
from some number of servers ?

It has scale (adding more servers, to improve performance, or aid in case
storage has become a problem), but also be redundant in case hardware
fails.

Thanks.

--
GJ