What are different web server options on Heroku? - ruby-on-rails

I recently deployed an app and am using WEBrick, and was considering on switching to Thin. I am wondering on the different options that exist and are best for a heroku environment?
Thanks.

Provided you're on Cedar stack you can use whatever you want - Thin works, you are able to get excellent performance out of Unicorn though on Heroku - http://blog.railsonfire.com/2012/05/06/Unicorn-on-Heroku.html

(Asummption: You don't mean WEB server (i.e Apache or Nginx), but your application process)
The only real constraint is what you can run on Linux. Nginx is the proxy that is used by the Heroku stack - but behind that it's up to you.
I've seen stuff running Thin, Webrick and Unicorn with no problems.

Related

Rails production server (thin): pages occasionally load slower

I'm running my Rails application through thin on Windows OS.
thin start -e production
Since the number of users grew, now around 10 people using the app simultaneously, there are times when a same page takes a while longer to load.
Are there other configurations that I need to set when running the server on production?
I'm quite sure that it has to do with the server since the slow down happens on pages that normally loads fast.
The Thin webserver is not meant to production environment. Instead of this you should use a different webserver and application server like Nginx/Unicorn, Nginx/Passenger.
I would recommend Passenger to run your rails app as fast as possible in production mode.
The thin webserver is very fast for few requests, but if there are simultaneously requests, thin gets very slow.
The following document describes about how to deploy rails application in windows. I haven't done this personally but, believe the latest versions should allow that. Please check the below link to see how it can be done
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2006/5/11/deploying-rails-on-windows-servers/

Setting up multiple rails apps using nginx and Puma

I have a web server serving multiple Rails applications using a combination of nginx and Passenger. This is pretty straightforward, because the Passenger install sets-up pretty much everything you need to connect to nginx.
I found "Rails app with Puma" that seems to explain how to set up nginx and Puma together. How would this configuration need to be modified in order to serve a second Rails application on the same server?
Also, this guide doesn't say anything about restarting the application automatically if there is a system reboot or some other issue. Is there a way to do that? The nginx + Passenger combo seems to do it by default.

Start Unicorn using ssl in development

I'm migrating my rails app (still in development) from Thin to Unicorn. My app uses config.force_ssl = true.
When using Thin I could just write:
thin start --ssl
My question is: What is the equivalent way to start Unicorn with ssl in development?
If I correctly understood your question, you're trying to run unicorn on port 443.
This is a bad idea.
Instead, to achieve the same goal, I would suggest, run unicorn on an unprivileged port (above 1024), or better on a unix socket, and switch Nginx before, passing all static stuff directly trough nginx, and the rails stuff, trough unicorn.
I know this doesn't answer your question, but for the user, it will work exactly the same, with some benefits when your app server (unicorn) crashes, for example a nice rendered 502 error page served via nginx instead of a plain network error message seen in the browser of your users.
You can with this solution run X different applications on the same port, with different subdomains. a must have for a development machine with many projects.

Rails webrick production port number

How can I permanently change my application port number in production?
I know I can specify the port number when starting the server rails s -p 3005, but was wondering how to change it so that I dont have to specifiy the port number everytime I start up the app.
Don't use webrick in production.
It is only optimized for development purposes. Use something like thin, unicorn or passenger for example. You can find capistrano recipes to start or restart web servers when deploying the app.
This seems to answer your question even though the question references running in development. I tend to agree with modifying the config/boot.rb as per.
But, iltempo is correct that you should be using a different stack in production. I've had good luck with Passenger.

Serving web application without Lighttpd/Apache

As Rails applications default run on port 3000, would it be possible to start the application on port 80? Is it really required to have a fastcgi/mod_proxy enabled web server in front? My users won't be more than three at a time. If so, how would I be able to do so?
Thanks!
WARNING: This is not a general purpose description of how to set up a Ruby on Rails production environment. If you want to host a public Rails website, I highly recommend using Apache with Passenger, which is very easy to install and maintain.
From your description, it sounds like you are working with some kind of internal application to be used within your office or similar. For this particular purpose, hosting the application via Webrick (the built-in web server in Rails) might be a sufficient solution. To do this, start the server with a -p command line argument: ruby script/server -p 80
This obviously requires port 80 to be available (not bound by some other web server). Also, on most operating systems, you will need root privileges to bind to port 80. The security implications of running a web site as root are serious, so you really only want to do this if you know what you are doing, and are absolutely sure that the server is completely shielded from the Internet.
If there isn't some specific reason you're trying to run with mongrel, I would recommend using Phusion Passenger as it is significantly easier to configure and support than mod_proxy+mongrel.
mongrel - http://github.com/fauna/mongrel
thin - http://code.macournoyer.com/thin/

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