[chef] postgres master/slave replication and failover to hot standby

[Bryan Berry < >]

I am starting to work on master/slave streaming replication for postgres, based on the database cookbook

https://github.com/opscode/cookbooks/tree/master/database

Please note that I am a total n00b to postgres.

I have to figure out to manage failover from master to slave. I imagine that I can do it w/ some kind of script to check whether master is available or not, then promote a slave. However, then I have make sure that a promoted slave is not demoted on the next chef run. 

If anyone has experience w/ these issues, I would much appreciate your advice. 

If anyone is working on a similar cookbook or has already written something that fulfills my requirements, please let know!

Cheers

BryanWB