Switchpipe vs Litespeed

[Tom Beddard]

Switchpipe looks very interesting and along with Phusion Passenger
(http://www.modrails.com/) it is good to see projects looking at
easing the multi-rails-app hosting headaches.

I'm just wondering if anyone has tried Litespeed though, as it has
native Rails support (http://www.litespeedtech.com) We've been using
it for the past 18 months to host our Rails sites and now have over
100 apps spread over 4 dedicated servers. It has two versions, free
and commercial. The free version is still very capable in some
production environments but has some limits and extended features
disabled. Worth giving it a try on your Mac or Linux box.

Litespeed requires the ruby-lsapi gem to be installed which provides
the connection from the server to the app. The idle ruby processes are
pruned after a timeout period, or more dynamically spawned on demand
(which I assume is similar to how Switchpipe works). This makes for
efficient memory usage especially for the majority of small sites.

I'm not wanting to take anything away from Switchpipe (i'm going to be
investigating its performance compared to Litespeed), but it might be
worth checking out the free version just so you have covered all the
options. It's web based admin has certainly made our server
maintenance a hell of a lot easier than messing around with apache/
nginx/mongrels etc configuration files.

(Oh and just to be clear I'm not in any way affiliated with Litespeed!)

[Peter Cooper]

On Mar 30, 11:10 pm, Tom Beddard <subb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not wanting to take anything away from Switchpipe (i'm going to be
> investigating its performance compared to Litespeed), but it might be
> worth checking out the free version just so you have covered all the
> options. It's web based admin has certainly made our server
> maintenance a hell of a lot easier than messing around with apache/
> nginx/mongrels etc configuration files.

If people can find something that works for them, that is the
important thing. SwitchPipe is just there to fill a gap in the market
until someone does it properly :)

LiteSpeed has its issues in the odd licensing arrangements of its
owners. They also see fit to censor their users and reject licenses
based on the type of content you choose to host. That lack of freedom
makes it a waste of time to me. SwitchPipe is in the public domain.
You can do absolutely anything with it (even sell it!)

Pete

[Ericson Smith]

Just to  clarify more on this...
Litespeed has one caveat on the license where you should not host Porn with it.

We actually use Litespeed (and Switchpipe) in a number of settings. Its really true, Litespeed is hands-down the best way to deploy Rails Apps these days, you simply "set it and forget it". It replaces all of the stack that we would traditionally use to host rails. It automatically launches and shuts down rails processes as traffic, memory and load varies, and you can quickly and easily setup a ton of virtual hosts on a single server (even with the free version). Its also the fastest solution on the market right now for serving both static, php and rails content, and is apache compatible.

After we switched to litespeed for the big sites, I could finally sleep without wondering if monit was managing my pack of mongrels. We're into Litespeed now for about 6 months or so and the deployment aspect if *totally* forgotten as it just runs itself.

People are turned off by the non-porn caveat. In that case, if you're putting together a property with images that are pornographic in nature -- then use another solution (apache + mongrels, switchpipe, ngnix, etc). However if you're the vast majority of rails programmers with standard sites,  the the free or paid version of Litespeed makes a lot of sense.

Personally, (even though I don't have porno sites), I don't like the terms of the license. However, practically, I have some big rails sites hosted on Litespeed as its the best deployment game in town at this point. I'm looking forward to Switchpipe maturing a bit more, and of course the upcoming mod_rails.

- Ericson Smith
CTO Funadvice.com
http://www.funadvice.com

[Peter Cooper]

On Mar 31, 1:22 pm, "Ericson Smith" <esconsu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> People are turned off by the non-porn caveat. In that case, if you're
> putting together a property with images that are pornographic in nature --
> then use another solution (apache + mongrels, switchpipe, ngnix, etc).
> However if you're the vast majority of rails programmers with standard
> sites,  the the free or paid version of Litespeed makes a lot of sense.

There was quite an indepth discussion about this topic here:

http://www.rubyinside.com/no-true-mod_ruby-is-damaging-rubys-viability-on-the-web-693.html

(the same post that inspired SwitchPipe's creation)

I think technology choices are (or should be) very personal, and
people should definitely choose what works for them without being
swayed by others opinions, mine included.

I don't run any porn sites or have any plans to, but I feel that using
Litespeed is in effect "supporting" censorship. It'd be like owning
shares of a slaughterhouse if you were a vegetarian. If people want to
put their morals to one side for short term gain, that is a personal
decision and they are certainly free to do that, but I do not want to.
SwitchPipe is here and available in the public domain so that people
who don't want to make moral choices at least have yet another option,
even if it's not the best one available in absolute terms.

Regards,
Peter Cooper