I like RDS because I don't have to think about backups, replication etc but if I colocate the app server (web server, application code) and the database server on the same machine I see 1-2 orders of magnitude performance improvement in database-intensive apps.
Replication is the same as usual; have another machine setup to replicate onto. The restriction is you can't fan out hundreds of application servers and half a dozen database servers if you need that - but I don't need to.
I haven't done this with clients but I'm doing it with my own (cost-sensitive) side projects and appreciate removing the internal network latency.
I like RDS for the same reason, but I wonder if there's a way you could run Postgres locally, as you suggest, while still using RDS for all the replication/backup side of things? That way the local Postgres management could be pretty minimal and outsource the "annoying bits" to RDS as before. I need to look into the best way to set up something like that.. perhaps pgPool-II.
Replication is the same as usual; have another machine setup to replicate onto. The restriction is you can't fan out hundreds of application servers and half a dozen database servers if you need that - but I don't need to.
I haven't done this with clients but I'm doing it with my own (cost-sensitive) side projects and appreciate removing the internal network latency.