FreeBSD allows the management of multiple instances of PostgreSQL by means of rc.conf(5) .
The trick is to use profiles , that are available for the PostgreSQL rc script (/usr/local/etc/rc.d/postgresql ) even if not well documented, at least in my opinion.
In order to understand how to deal with multiple PostgreSQL instances, consider a system with two cluster: test and prod .
In /etc/rc.conf you need to define the postgresql_profiles variable, where you list the clusters separated by spaces. Then, for each profile, you define the well know postgresql_xxx variables, specifying the profile name before the variable suffix. For example, to define a PGDATA , that will be usually defined into postgresql_data variable, you need to specify a postgresql_<profile-name>_data variable.
Therefore, in /etc/rc.conf you need to specify the following…

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