Let it all out...
Robby Russell
Wow, we have like 130+ subscribers in about 10 hours. This leads me to
think that either a) we have a bunch of experts who want to help people
who may have problems and/or b) we have a bunch of people who aren't
quite sure how they _should_ be deploying their Ruby on Rails applications.
So, let's try something fun.
Introductions!
* Who are you?
* What are you doing with Rails?
* Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
(Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Hopefully... we all _love_ Rails and want to see it continue to succeed
as well as it has. One of the biggest pains with Rails is related to
what happens once developers finish working on something and need to
launch it. The more that we can collectively improve our strategies and
solutions, the easier this will become for ourselves and those who adopt
Rails in the future.
Deployment should be just as fun (and easy) as learning and coding
Rails... so let's see what we can do to make that happen!
I'll respond to these questions tomorrow... but thought I'd send this
off while everybody is still getting seated in their chairs.
Cheers,
Robby
--
Robby Russell
http://www.robbyonrails.com/
http://www.planetargon.com/
Lutz Horn
On Jan 24, 8:44 am, Robby Russell <robby.li...@planetargon.com> wrote:
> * Who are you?
Lutz Horn, developer from Germany. I'm payed for programming
in an in-house Java web framework :/
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Small application for a local cinema with admin interface for
editing screenings, news items, etc.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes.
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
* GNU/Linux VPS
* Lighttpd --(proxy)--> single Mongrel --> MySQL
* No Capistrano, using rsync and manual restart instead.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
No, since I'm the only developer. Version managament is done on my
developemt machine using SVN. I've got root access to the server
and know enough GNU/Linux to be my own admin.
As soon as I find the time to move the SVN repository to the server,
I'll give Capistrano a try.
Regards
Lutz
Brian Takita
> * What are you doing with Rails?
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes.
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
* Apache -> Mongrel Cluster -> Mysql|Postgres
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
I have spent a good deal of time getting our deploy process unit and functionally tested.
Brian Takita
Andreas Schwarz
> * What are you doing with Rails?
I'm no professional Rails developer, I use it for some of my own
websites (http://www.ruby-forum.com,
http://www.mikrocontroller.net/forum/).
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
I'm running several Rails apps with Litespeed on a Ubuntu Linux server.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
None at all!
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
Andreas Schwarz
>> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
>> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
>> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
>
> I'm running several Rails apps with Litespeed on a Ubuntu Linux server.
I'm also using Capistrano, btw.
Erik Kastner
Erik Kastner. One of three in-house developers for
http://winelibrary.com/. The only one currently using Rails at our
company.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
TONS of stuff. I make at least a project a day... very few make it out alive.
Our two biggest, public sites are currently:
http://ask.winelibrary.com
http://labels.winelibrary.com
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
I think I've tried every suggested way except Nginx. Our current
setups are like this
Apache 1.3 (Debian) on one box proxying -> another box running
mongrels, sometimes fronted with pound.
Lighttpd -> (pound) -> mongrel_cluster
Some internal projects running of my dev box (with another apache
proxying to it)
EVERYTHING (even some non-rails stuff) managed with capistrano
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Sometimes it's a pain in the butt, but right now things are stable.
One of the problems I keep running into is how to deploy "little" apps
I come up with. The thing I miss about php is how easy it is to setup
and forget about a little project
Brian Hogan
Who are you?
Brian Hogan, all-around nice guy.
What are you doing with Rails?
Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
That's it from me :)
luminousbit
A rails developer / business owner from Cheyenne, WY
* What are you doing with Rails?
We have three different SAS style applications for rails available.
Many other businesses use our software (off of our servers, not
theirs). We have customer apps for:
* Tracking employee timesheets & pay (like ADP, but simple, cheap, and
more powerful)
* Tracking helpdesk & phone support tickets
* Building and distributing web-based surveys and questionaires. Lots
of results graphing, etc.
* What platform and services are you running to host it? (Apache, FCGI,
Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Our servers run an Apache frontend. However, Apache only serves our
static pages (Our corporate site). Anything for the application sites
is forwarded from apache to Pound. Pound load distributes to one of
several mongrel processes that handles the requests.
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Not really. I'm probably one of the only people out there not using
Capistrano. Quite frankly, it's just more than I need. I wrote some
simple bash scripts that will check out the latest SVN of the
application, put it in a versioned directory, update symlinks, and then
restart the servers. It does exactly what I want and leaves me in
control.
Michael Lee
> * Who are you?
Mike Lee, from San Francisco
> * What are you doing with Rails?
We've built a free online dating site - www.justsayhi.com
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yes - Apache 2.0 -> pack of mongrels -> mysql on Centos
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
The biggest immediate issue is that mongrel is leaking memory. We're
going to upgrade to Mongrel 1.0 + fastthread to see if that helps, and
also switch to minimagick from imagemagick. It's manageable right now
though, as we have monit just restart mongrel whenever memory usage
gets too high, although obviously that's not ideal.
After that, the next challenge is scaling as load continues to grow and
we want to stay ahead of the curve.
Looking forward to this list and to meeting you all.
Regards,
Mike
francois.beausoleil
On 24 jan, 02:44, Robby Russell <robby.li...@planetargon.com> wrote:
> * Who are you?
I am François Beausoleil, from Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada. I am the
person behind Piston, which I developed to help me when deploying Rails
applications :)
> * What are you doing with Rails?
I make CRM and open source applications.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yes, and plenty.
GreenbackGames.com: Pound to Apache 2 or Mongrel
WePutUpLights.com: Apache 2.2 mod_proxy_balancer to Mongrel
I did use Lighttpd +FCGI at some point, but migrated away from that
when Mongrel came out.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Yes and no. The sites work, and work fine. I'd like to modernize
everything, but some of the sites will be replaced with better ones
soon, so I'm not sweating it.
Thanks !
--
François Beausoleil
http://blog.teksol.info/
http://piston.rubyforge.org/
Dominik...@googlemail.com
On Jan 24, 8:44 am, Robby Russell <robby.li...@planetargon.com> wrote:
> Hey all!
> * Who are you?
>
Dominik Wei-Fieg, actually a musician and asian language specialist but
since eight years more in request as a software developer (I wonder
why)
> * What are you doing with Rails?
>
Currently I'm doing my own little webapps with rails but I'll try to
introduce a intranet site written in rails in my company soon.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
Apache and FCGI on a site5 account
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
not really, but I haven't (yet) got a huge load on those apps.
Bill Walton
Best regards,
Bill
Jodi Showers
>
I am Jodi Showers from Peterborough, Ontario Canada. I'm a business
and technology consultant, with a couple of apps coming down the
pipe,and when I have free time I like to blog about the technology
and business sides of software.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
>
We've deployed 2 Intranet sites - one in the medical domain and one
point of sale for small engine repair (never ceases to amaze me how
many different types of businesses there are out there)
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
So far we've deployed to internal win32 servers - apache 2 and
fastcgi. Since then mongrel has really taken off, so I'll likely
revisit these configs.
But we've a couple of specialized apps that we'll be launching -
after running beta on our office DSL/DDNS setup with RHEL4 and
Mongrel, we'll be looking for a hosting service. I'll likely talk to
Tom and EZ. among others.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can
> help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Our load has been very low on the Intranet solutions - but the coming
apps will likely (fingers crossed) have much bigger needs - and a
scaled approach is what I'll be looking for.
Looking forward to some great deployment discussions and the building
of new relationships.
Cheers,
Jodi
General Partner
The nNovation Group inc.
www.nnovation.ca/blog
ryandaigle
Ryan Daigle, Lead Engineer at ALTERthought in Raleigh, NC
> * What are you doing with Rails?
What aren't I doing with Rails? Professionaly we have
http://planixonline.com which an online software estimation tool.
Personally I have done a lot of 'play' apps as well.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yup
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
My preferred stack is Debian/Apache 2.2/Mongrel/Postgresql
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
No - get a reputable host..
dagny
Dagny Gromer.
I've been a programmer, engineer, it geekette, etc for almost 30 years
now.
* What are you doing with Rails?
I have a site www.actionshootingscores.com that computes and publishes
scores for competitive shooting matches. This is a personal endeavor
not part of my "day job" where I work for a local government.
* Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes. I tried apache/fcgi and apache/lttpd/fcgi. Now I'm using
apache/pound/mongrel on a shared host account at planetargon.com
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Yes. Perfomance is very erratic. Sometimes my app loads in a few
seconds, other times it crawls, occasionally it get http 500 errors.
When it is running similiar erratic performance can be seen. I know
this is caused by varying loads on the shared host. I'm coming to
believe that shared hosting is not compatible with rails applications.
But shared hosting is inexpensive. Tradeoffs ...
--
Dagny Gromer
dagnygromer.wordpress.com
Eric Nielsen
Eric Nielsen, full time developer (mainly Java, little bit of RoR),
spare-time Rails developer for personal projects
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Main project is a port of a self-written PHP application that services
the bulk of the competitions for the US Collegiate Ballroom Dance
community.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Recently deployed for alpha testing on FreeBSD, Apache2,
Mongrel/Mongrel_cluster. Two virtual servers(on different boxes) ---
one web/app, one database.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Two rather minor problems/annoyances
1.
I'm in a FreeBSD Jail, and I haven't found a good way to block direct
access to the mongrel processes running on the high numbered ports.
Apparently the 127.0.0.1 or localhost doesn't completely exists in the
Jail so mongrel can't use it to restrict access. And apparently
firewall level blocking would affect other clients on the physical
server.
2.
While I have root level access to the virtual server, I've been
running running cap as a non-privileged user and adding entries to the
sudoer file as needed. Initially I only had to add the command for
controlling the mongrel_cluster; however cap cleanup wants to run "sudo
rm -rf [directorylist]" which I'm not really comfortable adding "rm -rf"
to the sudoer file as a cap bug could cause quite a bit of damage. I've
looked over all the files/directories it wants to delete and the
non-privileged user is the owner so I can't tell why cap wants to run
this command as root anyways, but I can't find out how to disable a sudo
call within cap for a single use without turning :user_sudo to false for
everything.
Eric
Rich
Rich Corbridge, Tester/Developer, Utah
* What are you doing with Rails?
A couple of small personal projects and helping a friend with a web
site for a small business.
* Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
(Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yes, on a Site5 shared hosting account with Apache and FCGI.
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Yes, kinda. I don't make many changes and when I do I make them on the
live site---bad. I'd like to have a proper development environment on
my laptop, SVN on the server, and Capistrano to deploy/manage it all.
Brad Ediger
> Introductions!
Yay!
> * Who are you?
Brad Ediger, full-time Rails consultant. Madriska Media Group
(www.madriska.com)
> * What are you doing with Rails?
About 15-20 production Rails applications, mostly private enterprise
apps.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Too many times to count.
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
I have a pretty standard setup: CentOS 4. Apache 1.3 -> Mongrel.
PostgreSQL exclusively (but that's another discussion entirely). SVN
all over the place, and Capistrano on the apps that matter. Custom
init scripts to control Mongrel.
My large application has a pretty mature deployment setup. Oddly, I
develop features in svn trunk and deploy from branches/production.
Cap scripts do all the heavy lifting. I use Piston for plugin
management (thanks François!). I do development locally and then push
to one of three servers: development, staging, and production (which
uses a mongrel_cluster behind Pound). Nightly scripts migrate data
from production to staging so we have relatively fresh data to do
acceptance tests against.
I just converted my only Windows deployment from Apache/SCGI to
Apache/Mongrel, and it's running a lot better.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can
> help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
No major complaints since I switched to Mongrel. I would echo someone
else's sentiment that it's a pain to deploy small apps, much more so
than PHP or Perl.
be
Wes Gamble
using Rails since March '06. Before that, I was an enterprisey J2EE
developer, so I bring a lot of that "baggage" with me into the Rails world.
I'm working on two Rails apps. at the moment - one for an email
marketing company and another for a small insurance firm. Both apps.
are getting pretty close to deployment, so my thoughts are turning that way.
I haven't deployed yet, although I do have Capistrano set up on one
project to deploy to a test setup which is running Apache+FCGI. (I plan
to deploy against Mongrel for production for both apps. But I haven't
"flipped the switch" on any apps. yet.
Thanks,
Wes
Mike Sax
Mike Sax, Eugene, Oregon. I've had a Windows component business for
15 years (www.Sax.net) and a few months ago started a new company
(and I also got a Mac, took the Pragmatic Rails workshop in Portland,
and never looked back).
* What are you doing with Rails?
Building a wellness management system for special populations like
older adults, and people dealing with cancer, osteoporosis, MS. More
info at www.wellbeyond.com.
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
The app runs on EngineYard, and they do all the worrying for me. :)
They have an awesome setup with tons of redundancy. For an overview,
check out Ezra's site:
http://www.brainspl.at/articles/2006/09/24/engineyard-
technology-stack
I also recently got a cheap dedicated server at RimuHosting to bring
over all my other sites. It's running Ubuntu and MySQL right now.
I'll probably use LiteSpeed because it's so easy and everyone seems
to be very happy with it.
sbecker
> * Who are you?
Scott Becker, a long time web developer and designer, based in Tampa,
FL. I run a two person web-consulting firm called Electro Interactive.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Consulting, for small to mid-size business and a couple ambitious web
start-ups. :)
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes!
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Current preferred setup:
Dedicated Box Running:
Fedora Core 6
Apache 2.2.3
Mongrel Cluster
MySQL
Rails
Capistrano
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Currently it's working pretty well. Our capistrano scripts
automatically create most everything we need to worry about -
mongrel_cluster configs, apache configs, etc.
It's been a long road getting to this point experimenting with various
setups like shared hosting and FCGI!
Looking forward to hearing more insights from everyone!
--
Scott Becker
Electro Interactive, Inc.
Office: 813-333-5508
Web - http://www.ElectroInteractive.com
Blog - http://synthesis.sbecker.net
Jeremy Durham
Hey all!
Wow, we have like 130+ subscribers in about 10 hours. This leads me to
think that either a) we have a bunch of experts who want to help people
who may have problems and/or b) we have a bunch of people who aren't
quite sure how they _should_ be deploying their Ruby on Rails applications.
So, let's try something fun.
Introductions!
* Who are you?
Jeremy Durham; Rails only for the last nearly two years for all new development. Living in Boston, Mass.
* What are you doing with Rails?
Everything they'll let me. Running some pet projects on Rails, railsapi.org, documentation site, my work is eons.com, 50+ community portal, my blog, sites for friends, some plugins
* Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
(Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
8 app servers, all running 3-5 instances of 12+ different Rails apps. Lots of RAM. Deployed with apache 2.2 (mox_proxy_balancer) and Mongrel where I am now. Personally, I deploy to nginx proxying mongrel. Have used lighty, apache 1.3,2.0, and 2.2 in production at one point or another for "mission-critical" projects on Rails. All my personal stuff is on a 512mb VPS at serveraxis.
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Our deployment is reasonable, we have a wrapper around capistrano to deploy one to twelve+ of our apps at a time, depending on which apps are ready to go. Simple shell script. Had some issues with session collisions early on causing objects stored in sessions to explode our Mongrels, but once people starting namespacing, it's been much better. We also have some WebObjects, Java, and PHP apps in production that do not deploy with Capistrano.
Not that our system is bad, but I'm here to see how we can deploy better. Hoping to see some sample capistrano scripts
Andy Koch
Andy Koch
Web Applications Developer
PC-Doctor, Inc.
<http://www.pc-doctor.com>
We make PC diagnostic software. You know us if you have an HP, Lenovo
laptop, several other big name customer.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Several internal applications. Once I tried Rails I dropped PHP like
yesterday's newspaper. PHP is now dead to me, except for one off page
scripts.
Also, we have a team developing a big Rails external app through which
we will be selling our installable diagnostic software.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes, Apache 2.2 -> Mongrel on Debian.
Also, haven't seen anyone else claim this, we use Perforce for source
control. Which, I might add, works just fine with Capistrano.
Use cap exclusive for internal apps. I made a cap / rsync hybrid setup
to deploy our upcoming external app since our Perforce server does not
accept external connections. This mimics the regular cap deploy
procedure quite well.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
mmm... no, nothing dramatic.
digitalWorkbox
Well, I guess I'll be the first newbie to poke his head up.
> * Who are you?
Kyle Daigle, Lighting Design major at Boston University, freelance web
programmer
>
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Designing custom based niche apps for clients in all different fields.
Currently working on creating a real estate app, a custom inventory
management app, and an election management app. Hopefully keeping all
open
source to some degree.
>
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes, just started the other day actually.
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Linux server with Apache, FCGI, and MySql in a shared hosting
environment
>
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
It took me forever to get SVN, Capistrano, and my web host to all come
to
terms with eachother. It ended up being a mess getting all the correct
permissions but I finally got it to work with the help of many
different
resources over the net. In order to help other at my host, I posted a
guide
here: http://forums.asmallorange.com/index.php?showtopic=8892 Feel
free to
take a look and alert me of any errors: I'm new to this.
On 1/24/07 2:44 AM, "Robby Russell" <robby...@planetargon.com>
wrote:
--
Kyle Daigle
DigitalWorkbox
ky...@digitalworkbox.com
C: 860.324.8173
Joe Noon
Joe Noon, from the Bay Area, CA.
Inspirix - http://www.inspirix.com
Notary Depot - http://www.notarydepot.com
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Several in house applications (Notary Depot is the largest), and
working with a great company in San Francisco on a large Rails app.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes, I've settled on Litespeed and will never look back. Deployment
with capistrano is painless.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
None at all.
Ezra Zygmuntowicz
On Jan 23, 2007, at 11:44 PM, Robby Russell wrote:
>
> Hey all!
>
> Wow, we have like 130+ subscribers in about 10 hours. This leads me to
> think that either a) we have a bunch of experts who want to help
> people
> who may have problems and/or b) we have a bunch of people who aren't
> quite sure how they _should_ be deploying their Ruby on Rails
> applications.
>
> So, let's try something fun.
>
> Introductions!
>
> * Who are you?
Ezra Zygmuntowicz. Just another ruby hacker.
>
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Lots of stuff. Building apps, performance tuning and scalability
consulting, author of many plugins and high end clustered rails
hosting at my startup company http://engineyard.com
>
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
yup ;)
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
I've used just about every possible rails deployment configuration
over the last few years. The best configuration and the one I use
today is nginx -> mongrel cluster
>
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can
> help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
>
> Hopefully... we all _love_ Rails and want to see it continue to
> succeed
> as well as it has. One of the biggest pains with Rails is related to
> what happens once developers finish working on something and need to
> launch it. The more that we can collectively improve our strategies
> and
> solutions, the easier this will become for ourselves and those who
> adopt
> Rails in the future.
>
> Deployment should be just as fun (and easy) as learning and coding
> Rails... so let's see what we can do to make that happen!
>
> I'll respond to these questions tomorrow... but thought I'd send this
> off while everybody is still getting seated in their chairs.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Robby
Thanks for starting this list Robby, great idea.
Cheers
-- Ezra Zygmuntowicz
-- Lead Rails Evangelist
-- e...@engineyard.com
-- Engine Yard, Serious Rails Hosting
-- (866) 518-YARD (9273)
Philip Hallstrom
Philip Hallstrom living in Olympia, WA working for CardPlayer.com out of
Las Vegas as a full-time Rails developer and sysadmin.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Cardplayer.com
blog.pjkh.com (just mephisto so not super exciting :)
overthefencecards.com (nature cards my sister in law is selling)
I've got some other ideas too, but with two little kids, time is limited
:)
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yeah. We started with lighty/fastcgi back before mongrel hit the scenes
and switched pretty quickly to apache/mongrel as it just worked so much
better than the fastcgi stuff. I run lightspeed for personal stuff simply
because it saves me a lot of "idle ram".
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
No, not really. The only gotcha is that if you restart mongrel you have
to restart apache otherwise suffer the ~30 seconds before apache sees the
new mongrel processes. We also use memcache and have the same issue
there, but for the most part its all very smooth.
-philip
s...@notso.net
Sebastian Delmont, Senior Executive Vice-president of System
Architecture and Presentation Technologies for StreetEasy.com, in Nyew
York City.
>
> * What are you doing with Rails?
StreetEasy.com
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
We have a fairly stable lighttpd (2 servers) + fcgi (4 servers with 2
instances each) that will soon move to nginx + mongrel (already working
on staging site). Plenty of capistrano sauce too.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
For personal use, I'd love to see (or build) a simple deployment setup
that lets me run multiple rails apps (say, a couple of blogs using
mephisto, a forum, etc) without having to deal with configuration
issues, managing multiple mongrel clusters, etc, etc... Something that
lets me drop some files inside a folder, flip a switch and the site is
up; kinda like old style cgi or php apps.
bbyt...@gmail.com
Ben Bytheway, Developer located in Salt Lake City, Utah (office is in
Lehi, Utah)
I use rails for both professional and personal use.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Our main 2 products are a lead generation system and an ecommerce
solution.
Our last big project is a webinar platform (web classes with live
video, chat and slides) for a mentoring company:
http://www.prospersuccessinrealestate.com/
Our last ecommerce site is viewable at
http://spectroniqstore.com
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Currently running Apache + mongrel managed with capistrano
Brian LeRoux
* Who are you?
Brian LeRoux. Independant contractor doing rails dev from Vancouver, Canada. I was a .NET guy for five years prior to that doing CRM stuff. Did Java and other heresy for a couple of years prior to that.
* What are you doing with Rails?
Mostly social software style applications.
* Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes, tho not very well. =)
** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
(Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Apache/Mongrel has been the only deployment style I've been familiar with. Looking forward to perfecting that art and getting comfortable w/ nginx.
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Well, sometimes but I think its really just getting used to the hosts style (Rails Playground is totally different than Argon for example.) That said, I've just started an app w/ a fresh centos install on a dedicated machine so I think I'm going to have radically different issues.
Hopefully... we all _love_ Rails and want to see it continue to succeed
as well as it has. One of the biggest pains with Rails is related to
what happens once developers finish working on something and need to
launch it. The more that we can collectively improve our strategies and
solutions, the easier this will become for ourselves and those who adopt
Rails in the future.
Cheers to that, and thank you for starting this list Robby!
r...@robotomy.net
Randy Souza, Baltimore, MD, USA
Manager of Technical Services for the Center for Community Technology
Services at the University of Baltimore
>> What are you doing with Rails?
Building websites for nonprofits and internal use/management. Teaching
Ruby/Rails as part of an undergrad Advanced Website Development course.
>> Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes:
- annoyingly, on Apache/FastCGI (certain shared hosting providers that
our clients come in with)
- smoothly, on Apache 2.2/Mongrel and Nginx/Mongrel (more Rails-focused
shared hosts and VPSs)
>> Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Only when we're working with large, non-Railsy shared hosting
providers. And we can usually convince our clients to switch without
much pain.
Thanks for setting this group up!
Scott Brooks
Scott Brooks, developer from Grande Prairie, AB, Canada working for
Hermitworks Entertainmen.
I spend about 50% of my time working on rails, the other 50% working on
our up and coming game SpaceTrader
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Building a website for SpaceTrader. It acts as a back end to the
authentication for the game.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Apache 1.3x/FCGI a long time ago, now Apache 2.2/Mongrel
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Nope, it works great. Capistrano is great.
Scott Brooks
Zed A. Shaw
On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:46:31 -0800
"Scott Brooks" <bla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> * Who are you?
Zed
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Not much really.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Nope, never, I'm lame.
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
FCGI on Mongrel through Pound behind a Cisco LB to serve midget porn.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
No, but the people who try deploying with the stock mysql drivers do.
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Well I'm guessing everyone knows my story, so I'll just listen. Feel free to write a specific story about Mongrel, good or bad.
--
Zed A. Shaw, MUDCRAP-CE Master Black Belt Sifu
http://www.zedshaw.com/
http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321483502 -- The Mongrel Book
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/
http://www.lingr.com/room/3yXhqKbfPy8 -- Come get help.
Joe Clarke
Joe Clarke from Myrtle Beach, SC. I am the owner of
RailsPlayground.com and SVNRepository.com.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
We use Rails to power some of our back-end systems and our Subversion
control panel.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yes, I have helped deploy a lot of Rails applications. Apache 2.2 +
mod_fcgid (not mod_fastcgi) works well for lower traffic applications.
Apache 2.2 + mod_proxy_balancer with mongrel is preferred for
applications with greater demands.
--
Joe Clarke
RailsPlayground.com
Bill Walton
Bill Walton
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Regaining my center. I 'started life' as a developer but moved into project
mgmt. / mgmt after about five years. Fifteen years later I took a deep
breath, a long look, and asked myself: WTF? Rails is a blessing. I'm using
it to develop a site that'll launch within the next couple of weeks. I'm
pretty sure I can brute-force my way through the initial deployment if I
have problems with Cap, but the business plan is about SAS, so that ain't
gonna work for long. Looking forward to learning what I need to learn.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
No. This is my first. And I'm really glad ya'll started this list.
Best regards to all,
Bill
Philip Hallstrom
>
> Sebastian Delmont, Senior Executive Vice-president of System
> Architecture and Presentation Technologies for StreetEasy.com, in Nyew
> York City.
>
>> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
>> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
>> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
>
> For personal use, I'd love to see (or build) a simple deployment setup
> that lets me run multiple rails apps (say, a couple of blogs using
> mephisto, a forum, etc) without having to deal with configuration
> issues, managing multiple mongrel clusters, etc, etc... Something that
> lets me drop some files inside a folder, flip a switch and the site is
> up; kinda like old style cgi or php apps.
Sebastian -
Look into lightspeed. It's not quite that easy, but it is *really* close
using their virtual templates... nice thing is it will manage the rails
instances itself so they will all go away if no one is hitting your site.
I've got 3.0RC2 setup and a rails virtual template. To get another app
running I'd need to upload the app, and then just say "here's another
rails app" that should use the rails virtual template and here's where it
lives. Done.
-philip
Joshua Bates
* Who are you?
Joshua Bates, full-time++ rails programmer in Santa Fe, NM
* What are you doing with Rails?
* Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
(Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Apache and mongrel cluster
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Nope, but I've had plenty of problems deploying with shared hosting and/or fastcgi
joshua
Vishnu Gopal
> > * Who are you?
Vishnu Gopal, working from New Delhi, India at Uzanto (uzanto.com),
part-time developer and sysadmin for about 6 months now. www.vish.in
> > * What are you doing with Rails?
SlideShare (slideshare.net), the entire app is written in pre-1.2
Rails, and we're moving to the whole Restian goodness soon =)
> > * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> > ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> > (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yeah, while we were working on deploying SlideShare (4-5 months
before), had evaluated a LOT of options. Mongrel looked to be
promising, so went with that using a Lighty -> Pound -> Mongrel
proxying on three machines load balanced by Big IP twins. Nothing
dramatic, but we've handled diggs and techcrunches with ease. It's an
exercise in spending a lot less to get a lot more. See Jon's slideshow
here:
http://www.slideshare.net/jboutelle/scalable-web-architectures-w-ruby-and-amazon-s3-14894
Am planning to switch to Lighty 1.5 and take pound out of the
equation. Or if it gets delayed a lot switch to HAProxy. Nginx is too
Russian for me even though every time I've played with it it's been
good.
> > * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Yup. Would love more of PHP instant-gratification goodness for small
apps, and Mongrels seem to need a restart often (it's my leaky code
and crappy servers) and there was some amount of babysitting before we
got all the moving chains into place. Recently upgraded to Mongrel 1.0
and that went well.
Vish
(vishmaker on #rails-deployment)
Jarkko Laine
Jarkko Laine, from Tampere, Finland. I run my own shop web O'Design
(http.//www.odesign.fi) developing web apps on Rails, giving Rails
training and writing books (http://railsecommerce.com) about it.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Primarily http://dotherightthing.com at the moment. With all the
Rails edge goodness.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
In order of appearance:
Apache + FCGI
Lighty + FCGI
Ligthy + Mongrel
Nginx + Mongrel
LB + Nginx + Mongrel
Currently we're on the last option, running dotherigththing.com on
several virtual machines. One's running a load balancer (Pound IIRC,
haven't touched that box), one (about to expand soon) nginx + a
couple of Mongrels and one MySQL. Next steps are setting up
memcached, migrating to PostgreSQL and setting up static file serving
through S3.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Nothing big, but it would be nice if the front end web server would
have better control over the backends so that requests would not be
sent to a dead Mongrel etc. This hasn't really been an issue yet,
though, since Mongrel is really stable nowadays and we have Monit
keeping them up in the case of emergency.
//jarkko
--
Jarkko Laine
http://jlaine.net
http://dotherightthing.com
http://www.railsecommerce.com
http://odesign.fi
Marcus Roberts
Marcus Roberts, based in London, UK. Sole developer in a three man
software startup.
>
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Integrating it with the excellent infrastructure provided by Amazon
Web Services at the moment, to allow us to offer lever large amounts
of storage and bandwidth relatively cheaply.
>
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
On our own servers, Apache 2.2 and Mongrel, on Centos based virtual
machines running under VMware. Also on Apache EC2 instances, using
the same software.
>
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
No. I was suprised, as when I was learning Rails I was reading about
all the struggles people were having with deployment. I was lucky
enough that by the time I deployed for real, Capistrano was out,
Mongrel was stable, and everything seems to work very well.
Luca Mearelli
2007/1/24, Robby Russell <robby...@planetargon.com>:
> * Who are you?
Luca Mearelli (from Citta' di Castello, Italy)
>
> * What are you doing with Rails?
I did a CRM, an invoicing app (http://fatturalo.com), a web text
editor (http://thetyper.com), plus various other experiments, I'm
working on a social-software site (plus I'll be doing in rails all of
wikierp.com )
>
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
yessir
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
on a shared hosting: Apache+FCGI, Apache+CGI (both with pain...)
on VPSs /dedicated: Apache 2.0 + Mongrel
>
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Using capistrano+the Railsmachine gem saved my life (really!)
> Deployment should be just as fun (and easy) as learning and coding
> Rails... so let's see what we can do to make that happen!
>
The more Rails we do the more easy and fun we should make *also*
deployment (if we wan to keep the developers' experience up to the
level of the rest of the framework)
This list was needed.
Luca
Dan Lucraft
* Who are you?
Daniel Lucraft, from Wimbledon UK (near the tennis courts). I'm
actually a Phd student at Imperial College, and my working language is
Prolog. I only do Ruby for fun and profit, and so that one day I might
be able to get a job. It occurs to me how strange it is to be learning
Ruby in order to be able to get a job, but it's better than Prolog!
* What are you doing with Rails?
I'm working on a community site for an open source Prolog system, and a
UK-only technorati clone. Also I have two open-source projects in the
pipeline, relating to blog networks.
* Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
On a VPS (Railsmachine, who are sweet), and very soon my first custom
deployment. (Prolog thingy)
** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
CentOS, Apache, Mongrel::cluster, Mysql.
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Last time I tried a custom deployment with FastCGI it was an absolute
PITA. Railsmachine make things easy so I have no complaints there, but
I'm interested to see how things go when I have to set up the stack
myself.
Robert
> * Who are you?
Robert Evans, web developer for Einstein Industries in San Diego, CA.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
For my current company, I've written:
* website generator
* Event/Calendar
* File Download Center (similiar to strongspace)
For freelance:
* Social Networking App
* Online Appointment Scheduling for Ethan Allen
I have several projects in the works that I'll be releasing this year.
Some on my own and some with a partner.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yes. Apache FCGI, Apache Mongrel, Litspeed Mongrel.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Not too much. I've always done it manually (ssh into the server, svn
co, setup the server) and am now moving to capistrano. I feel that in
order to be a better programmer, sys admin, one ought to do things
manually to understand the process and know what is going on and then
can move to something automated. That is just my opinion; I like to
know what's going on behind the scenes so I have a better understanding.
wrecked
Nice list!
> * Who are you?
Bradley Taylor
>
> * What are you doing with Rails?
I own/operate Rails Machine, a vps-based Rails specific hosting
company.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Tried just about everything. Running Apache 2.2 -> mongrel cluster.
>
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
No
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
I wrote a some capistrano tasks (railsmachine gem) and mongrel tools
(mongrel_cluster gem) to alleviate most of the drudgery.
Bradley Taylor
Owner, Rails Machine
Empowering Developers
http://railsmachine.com
Ben Myles
Ben Myles.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Developing a bunch of different applications and libraries.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yep.
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
My current favourite is nginx + mongrel on gentoo.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Works well, but I'm always trying to make my life easier.
- Ben
Mark Carey
> * Who are you?
Mark Carey
Sys Admin for Salem Communications in San Francisco
Freelance Web Dev mainly using PHP
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Writing an internal discrepancy ticket tracking system for our 2 Radio
stations. Also working on an app to serve and manage dj mixes with
tracklists, dynamically create cue sheets, and an iTunes optomized
podcast feed.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes, only Typo
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Dreamhost shared hosting, so Apache + FastCGI.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Typo kept crashing and became very unreliable. I wasn't sure if it was
Typo or Dreamhost, until I talked with someone who was hosting the same
build on Mediatemple and said he only had problems once (too much
memory being used).
Also I created a cron job to routinely run rake log:clear that I know
should have worked (tested it @ command line and worked perfect and had
all the paths right), but even though I would get emails saying the
task completed successfully, the rake task never ran. I have since
switched my blog to Wordpress and am evaluating other hosting options.
So far Slicehost and Mediatemple have caught my eye.
Pascal Belloncle
Pascal here. my main production experience with rails is with my blog (http://blog.nanorails.com) for the past year or so. Finally left dreamhost for a much better environment, with apache+mongrel (thanks Zed!) at http://railsplayground.com (and not much more expensive). I've got a few more apps I'm working on that will require a bigger setup and I'm currently thinking multiple clustered VPSes with nginx+mongrels.
Blog is currently running typo (80+Mb mongrels), but not for too much longer once I can move all my custom stuff to mephisto.
Current deployment is now working nicely (with Capistrano).
Pascal.
Wesley Moxam
Wesley Moxam.
Sysadmin/developer/partner at Kibbles Software, a Toronto based rails
development firm.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Typo/custom blog, on Textdrive.
noteshq.com (launch pending) on Rails Machine.
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
lighty + fcgi on textdrive
mongrel + apache on textdrive
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
The blog on textdrive is unused now due to the problems I've had with
it. I actually developed a lightweight blog to replace Typo since it
crashed so much (I believe it was a RAM restriction problem). It's
still runnng too slow for my taste. I'll be moving it to Rails Machine
shortly.
Rails Machine has been easy and trouble free for the test deployments
I've performed so far. I don't expect any problems once the production
site rolls out.
-- Wes
Justin Rocha
Hash: SHA1
Robby Russell wrote:
> Introductions!
>
> * Who are you?
Justin Rocha, Computer Science and Japanese Language student at Cal
State Chico.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
At the moment, just my blog which was historically running typo, but is
currently running mephisto (due to a my own mistake and messing up the
DB). When I have spare time (which isn't very often :), I've been
attempting to write some specialized blogging software for my site, and
a program called 'Exhibits', which is an online image gallery.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
All my rails projects are deployed with capistrano and served using
Apache2 + mongrel on a server I administer. When I first started I was
using Apache+CGI, and good lord was that painful.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
After figuring out a way to get some svn caching working in capistrano
and getting mongrel setup and finally getting rid of CGI, things have
been almost perfect. Next step is to figure out clustering!
- --
Justin Rocha KG6SGU
- -Xenith || xen...@xenith.org || http://xenith.org/
JabberID: xen...@dhbit.ca || AIM: JustinR98
Enlightenment -> http://www.enlightenment.org/
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paul.e
* Who are you?
Paul Edminster Web Services Manager for Gonzaga University
* What are you doing with Rails?
All internal custom developed web applications are now done in Rails.
First one just recently deployed is an aggregated morning email for
all staff, faculty and students.
* Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
(Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yes, our first deployed one is VMWare ESX + RHEL5beta + Apache 2.2 +
Mongrel_Cluster - have used Apache + FCGI while learning.
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can
help
point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
No headaches. Most will be niche projects with low demand.
I've come to realize that it's best to have complete access to your
server environment in order to get everything ironed out. I think most
web developers in higher ed don't have that luxury. They rely on
system admins that aren't comfortable with Ruby/Rails and that may
prevent them from moving in that direction. Also, all of my server
admin scripts are done in Ruby.
*Robby
Thanks Robby!
Paul
Marston
Marston Alfred (www.marstononline.com). Main developer for
SugarStats.com. I'm from San Diego, CA but am now living in
Rotterdam, The Netherlands at the moment :-)
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Using it to program my startups web app; www.sugarstats.com. It's an
web app for online diabetes management and tracking. Started 9 months
ago learning Rails from scratch (used to do a little PHP/MySQL) and I
haven't looked back.
Right now its 90% straight CRUD goodness, we've focused more heavily
on the actual UI. We're also doing Graphs via Gruff, just moved over
to Restful_authentication (I'm a REST newbie but I'm lovin it.), stats
aggregation, email stats processing into user accounts, ActiveMerchant
like paypal integration and RJS/Ajax in the right places.
Some gems/plugin's were using include: gruff, flex_image,
simply_helpful, google analytics plugin, secure actions plugin,
active_form, enkoder, flex_times, mocha, tzinfo,
restful_authentication and annotate_models.
Being more of a network/systems guy more so than a real programmer, I
was pleasantly surprised at how fast I could get a working prototype
up so fast. Now we're almost ready for launch.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Current Setup: LiteSpeed 2.2.6 + Ruby LSAPI + MySQL on Ubuntu in Rails
1.2.1 and deployed via Capistrano.
I've deployed a few minor apps (wiki's, blogs, bug trackers etc). I'm
one of those guys over-obsessed with performance and efficiency even
when its not an issue.
I had the production version setup with Nginx + Mongrel_Cluster. Not
too hard to setup (Thanks to Ezra) and quite fast. Though I've
recently switch to LiteSpeed 2.2.6 and I've found it to be the best
solution for me. Deployment is DEAD simple (via the web interface, a
few clicks literally), takes little memory and their Ruby LSAPI is
quite fast and efficient. With my basic tests its just as fast as my
previous setup and better in some cases. LiteSpeed does seem to be
better on memory usage (similar to Nginx on the web server front but
also seems to take less for each Ruby LSAPI process than each Mongrel
did).
All this on Ubuntu Server on VPS's between 256MB and 512MB Ram (via
slicehost.com)
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Since moving to LiteSpeed none at all. Even with Nginx there weren't
very many problems at all. Can't complain :-)
crayz
Paul Meserve, PHP convert, Rails n00b
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Internal applications for employee use at HostMySite, a web hosting
company
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
We started out with Apache 1.3 + FCGI, moved to Apache 1.3 + single
mongrel, moved to Apache 2.2 + mod_proxy_balancer + mongrel_cluster
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
We're very happy with Rails & mongrel. We need to spend some time
fixing up our deployment process, e.g. using Capistrano(I know, I
know, the shame of "svn up"). We also need to work on a more resiliant
server setup. Currently we're running everything: Apache/mongrel/MySQL
on a Virtuozzo VPS. We want to figure out the "right" way of doing
database replication & deployment on multiple servers, and then load
balance between the two. Current & upcoming apps need to be reliable,
and currently a single hardware failure could put us in a lot of
trouble
I'm curious what everyone else does - I was thinking using one server
with Apache only, that can then proxy requests to multiple servers
each running app + DB, doing mySQL replication
Ralf Graf
On 24 Jan., 08:44, Robby Russell <robby.li...@planetargon.com> wrote:
> * Who are you?
>
Ralf Graf from Karlsruhe, Germany. Self-employed Web-Developer.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
>
Some projects, including some conventional stuff like a shop and my
personal project, a thing one could call a personal Weblog-Wiki-Web2.0-
Hub (did I forget a buzzword? ;-)).
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes!
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
>
I started with Apache 2.0/FastCGI, never managed to get this thing to
work reliable.
After that, Lighty and FastCGI. Works almost good, got some issues
with caching, only on some application. And the annoying thing that
killing Lighty doesn't kill the FastCGI-processes and not even reaper
started and stopped them reliable (the only thing reliable was kill
-9) let me try Mongrel. And this works!
My current setup: A dedicated server, Ubuntu-Linux, MySQL 5.0, Apache
2.2 with mod_proxy_balancer and Mongrel.
I don't use Capistrano. I feel somewhat uncomfortable to have a ssh-
user on my machine that can login from outside and become root with
just a sudo.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
No.
Regards
Ralf
Chris Conrey
> * Who are you?
Chris Conrey, Human/Geek Relations at Integrum Technologies, in
Arizona.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
We develop a number of Rails apps for clients, as well as building our
own products in house.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yup, depending on the project, we've used a few of these.
Looking forward to talking to you all!
Chris Conrey
http://chrisconrey.com
http://www.integrumtech.com
jgeiger
Joey Geiger, web developer for onmilwaukee.com, a local daily magazine
about Milwaukee, WI.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
We're updating the website from mod_perl to use rails. Right now it's
new development, but we're hoping to start converting some of the
major portions of the site soon. I'm also doing some work for other
clients we have. I've got a fair number of personal sites that haven't
progressed beyond the, "I own the domain name" stage.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
onmilwaukee.com is hardware load balancer --> apache 1.3 --> nginx ->
mongrel
personal is currently apache 2.2 --> mongrel, but I'm going to move to
nginx --> mongrel, since it looks interesting and I'll be moving my
sites that require apache to a different virtual machine.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Using capistrano to deploy, and it's actually working very well. My
only headache is the fact that mod_proxy for apache 1.3 doesn't have a
"ProxyPass ! /directory" command, so I had to use nginx in front of
the mongrels to serve static files. It's working fine, just a bit
kludgy.
I'm using monit to check up on the mongrel clusters, and it works very
nicely, except (as I've posted all over the place now) I've got some
form of memory leak, and I can't get that controller to stop creating
entries in the log files... Not so much a deployment headache as a
rails headache...
Thanks.
Edwin van Nuil
On Jan 24, 8:44 am, Robby Russell <robby.li...@planetargon.com> wrote:
> * Who are you?
My name is Edwin van Nuil and I'm a consultant/developer at Oblivion
b.v. based in the Netherlands.
>
> * What are you doing with Rails?
>
We have started with Rails more than a year ago. We started with a few
small applications, but recently we did a few fullblown applications.
At the moment we are developing a large application for analysing
Energy usage and billing. This is a complete rebuild of a inhouse
developed J2EE application.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yes, a few on Fedora Core 5/6 with Lighttpd, mongrel and MySQL. A few
on OS/X Tiger server with Lighttpd, mongrel_cluster and MySQL.
Currently we are deploying on a RHEL 4 server with Apache 2.2.4 /
mod_proxy_balacing / Mongrel_cluster and MySQL
>
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
No
Regards,
Edwin
Val
Val Aleksenko, programmer at Revolution Health Group
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Working on one of the largest RoR projects out there (or so we
claim ;-) ) - http://www.revolutionhealth.com/
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yes, there are a bunch of RoR apps under umbrella of a single portal,
each on its own deployment track
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
> new message to the list and go into detail. Perhaps some of us can help
> point you in a _better_ direction. :-)
Two biggest challenges:
* Working in a more rigid organization with formal QA and Ops
environments, where the development team has little/no access
* Multiple apps with various dependencies shared via gems
We had to build our own delivery/deployment tools to provide a
seamless deployment whether it's from a developer's machine to a dev
server, or from QA to prod. For example, we use gems in development
environments, but since Ops deploy Java/Python/You-Name-It, their
requirement is RPM only. So we re-wrap gems to RPMs when we push them
to QA.
We plan to talk more about it in our team's blog - http://
revolutiononrails.blogspot.com
This article provides some insights how deployment looks like:
http://revolutiononrails.blogspot.com/2007/01/new-rhg-developers-illustrated-primer.html
msears
Mark Sears from Alberta, Canada
One of 3 full-time Rails developers at Godspeed Computing
> * What are you doing with Rails?
http://www.eBible.com is our first rails site with more in the works
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes, we had a tiered setup at our own colocation space running
lighttpd and fastcgi but just went virtual with Textdrive containers
and BIG-IP load balancer to 16 mongrels across 2 app containers.
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Just made the move earlier this week so we'll see. So far so good but
we need to get capistrano set back up for the new configuration and
set up some more monitoring, etc.
dima
* Who are you?
Dejan Dimic from Belgrade, Serbia
Currently Head of Development in a TENFore representatives in Serbia.
Most of past 10+ years spend in C++ development of real-time systems,
stock market data visualizations, charting systems and such stuff.
At first I use ruby for some file processing and some maintenance
scripts. Nowadays I tend to use it for everything.
Since rails come in to my life, every spare minute is engage in some
pet web project of mine.
* What are you doing with Rails?
At this particularly moment I make a last moment preparations for
presentation of Online Commodity Market for one very big (rich - I
will love if you are my) client.
Alongside real-time online presentation they wish for same app on a
USB HD that upper management could play with it while they are flying
from one meeting to another.
Beside that, I have two rails project waiting o go online as soon as I
find time. Currently still in development phase.
* Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Mongrel is my choice, with Apache.
* Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Not at this moment but it is always a challenge to do the finest and
it is essential to be informed about the options.
Dejan
Robby Russell
> Hey all!
>
> Wow, we have like 130+ subscribers in about 10 hours. This leads me to
> think that either a) we have a bunch of experts who want to help people
> who may have problems and/or b) we have a bunch of people who aren't
> quite sure how they _should_ be deploying their Ruby on Rails applications.
>
> So, let's try something fun.
>
> Introductions!
>
> * Who are you?
>
Robby Russell, Founder and first inhabitant of a little known planet
named Argon[1]. ;-)
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Developing, consulting, and hosting... and writing Programming Rails[2]
for O'Reilly.
>
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
All of the above at one point or another. Currently, we're encouraging a
Nginx + Mongrel Cluster setup to our customers.
>
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Not like it was a few days ago[3]... ;-)
I'm really looking forward to the discussions that are to come. Thank
you all for subscribing!
[1] http://www.planetargon.com/
[2] http://www.programmingrails.com/
[3] http://rubyurl.com/RHV
-Robby
--
Robby Russell
http://www.robbyonrails.com/
http://www.planetargon.com/
esconsult1
> * Who are you?
Programmer for some 20+ years in almost everything :-)
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Building a bunch of sites. Just launched http://www.funadvice.com a
few months ago. Doing a LOT of private client things with ruby and
with rails.
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yup.
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
Apache + Mongrel + Postgresql + Linux
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Yeah.. a little.
> ** If yes, share some of your story... and if it's long enough, post a
The mongrels sometimes die with sending mail or doing search with
ferret. Monit kickstarts back the whole thing, so I do get emails when
they die and monit starts them back again. Monit rocks!!
- Ericson Smith
Jeremy McAnally
> * Who are you?
>
Jeremy McAnally, freelance developer, designer, and author.
> * What are you doing with Rails?
Development and consulting, while also writing Ruby in Practice for
Manning and (slowly) working on the Rails companion volume to my other
book, Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book.
>
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
Yes; most on FCGI, but I've been poking at Pound/Mongrel and looking at Nginx.
>
> * Is your current deployment causing you some headaches?
Amazingly, no. I figured that given the various environments that Ive
had to deploy into that I would have some pretty big problems, but
fortunately very careful consideration and planning has saved me most
of the hassle associated with Rails deployment.
Zed A. Shaw
"Jeremy McAnally" <jeremym...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes; most on FCGI, but I've been poking at Pound/Mongrel and looking at Nginx.
Keep in mind that Pound is only good for a few mongrels. I've ran into some places that are trying to use Pound to run way more than the 3-4 I recommend and it's killing them.
If you're on all Unix, nginx isn't much more difficult to setup than Pound.
--
Zed A. Shaw, MUDCRAP-CE Master Black Belt Sifu
http://www.zedshaw.com/
http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321483502 -- The Mongrel Book
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/
http://www.lingr.com/room/3yXhqKbfPy8 -- Come get help.
Trevor Turk
> * What are you doing with Rails?
I started out just trying to learn Ruby/Rails, but found myself forced
to learn about Subversion, Capistrano, Apache, etc etc etc before I
could get a site working on a domain other than "localhost" :)
I'm just out looking for easy deployment solutions, and I'm curious
about what all of you experts out there are doing. I'd imagine that
Rails deployment is going to get easier and easier - thanks to great
stuff like Mongrel and that. Ideally, deployment, scaling, and
performance wouldn't be issues I'd have to worry about - but I
supposed we live in the real world :) One day, though...
I'm learning-by-doing by developing a toy forum site (using Beast as a
sort of cheat-sheet) and I've been able to struggle up to the point
where it's live on Media Temple's (gs) hosting deal. That's about
it... so far!
- Trevor Turk
- http://almosteffortless.com
Robby Russell
> On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 22:15:21 -0500
> "Jeremy McAnally" <jeremym...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes; most on FCGI, but I've been poking at Pound/Mongrel and looking at Nginx.
>
> Keep in mind that Pound is only good for a few mongrels. I've ran into some places that are trying to use Pound to run way more than the 3-4 I recommend and it's killing them.
>
> If you're on all Unix, nginx isn't much more difficult to setup than Pound.
>
I'll second this. The pound config file might look more attractive on a
superficial level, but once you dig into the nginx config, it starts to
make sense pretty quickly.
- Robby
jim
Hi all,
> * Who are you?
Jim Ray, founder of MosaicGlobe, and maintainer of
PlanetRubyOnRails.org
> * What are you doing with Rails?
MosaicGlobe and some real estate contract work. Also playing around
with Amazons EC2 service and Rails.
>
> * Have you deployed Ruby on Rails application(s) before?
Yes
> ** If yes, what platform and services are you running to host it?
> (Apache, FCGI, Mongrel, Pound, Nginx?)
* FreeBSD and CentOS
apache fast-cgi, lighttpd w/ mongrel, pound w/ mongrel, I've
setup Nginx in a development environment for testing