Hi Chuck,
> 1. Tomcat won't start when the slave 2.2.2.222 is down. Is there a setting to allow for this?
The connection property "allowSlaveDownConnections=true" should do just that. Do you have a stack trace we can look at?
> 2. If a node goes down at any point does the driver blacklist them, because it seems if a kill a node that my application hangs on queries that are going to the read only replica. Is there a way to have it ban failed nodes?
I'm not sure I understand your question.
A replication aware connection internally manages two load-balanced connections. One for the master (or masters in a multi-master replication setup) and another for the slaves. You can set the connection property "loadBalanceBlacklistTimeout" with some value to turn on blacklisting inside each one of the internal load-balanced connections.
As of switching from a master to a slave server on a master down fail-over, this can only happen when establishing new connections and if the connection property "allowMasterDownConnections=true" is set. In any case, when this happens, the connection is automatically set as read-only. Is this what you mean?
> I guess in general does Master/Slave Replication gracefully handle failed slave nodes?
Yes, the internal load-balanced connections take care of that automatically. You have the power to configure several aspects of these connections, though. Please consult the connection properties "loadbalance*" in
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/connector-j/5.1/en/connector-j-reference-configuration-properties.html and
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/connector-j/5.1/en/connector-j-multi-host-connections.html for additional information.