I'm trying to run a Ruby on Rails project (redmine) on a VPS. It's working, but it takes quite a bit of RAM. The rails application has very light usage compared to the rest of the VPS. I have lighttpd running on the server as well.
I'm new to Ruby and know there are several ways to launch a webapp in Ruby. I'm currently just using webrick (and am okay with launching it by hand). Is there another way to launch a webapp that is more memory efficient?
Rails really just takes a shitload of memory, it's a damned big app. One of the things you can do is try to get Ruby Enterprise Edition installed but if you're on a VPS there's probably not much chance of that. But perhaps the best option is to drop the app on heroku and not worry about it anymore. You'll have other difficulties like setting up email to contend with but otherwise Heroku is the best thing that ever happened to rails (I think at least. Maybe Merb though :P)
If you're new to Rails, configurations, and even Linux - your best bet is Apache/Nginx + Phusion Passenger + REE. If your VPS is something you control such as Slicehost, Webbynode, Linode, or similar - then that'll be the easier route.
Slicehost articles should help you out a lot by walking you through each step of configuring your VPS. And the steps even work on other VPS hosting companies, just match up the Linux distro.
If you're really green to RoR and setting up VPSes's-es (?) and unless you need more than a 512MB slice - I agree with Chuck, start with Heroku until you hit about 3-4 dynos. And since the Redmine demo is on Heroku - you know it works!
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I have a question about deploying a Rails application. I know the information exists else where, but my issue is that I can't place it cohesively together. Currently I'm on Dreamhost and would like instructions on how to deploy my app there. I feel like I should be using Capistrano in some fashion but I honestly am pretty lost. Any suggestions on deploying easily or a better host that is around the same price point (less than $10 a month).
Any suggestions on deploying easily or a better host that is around the same price point (less than $10 a month).
Have you heard of Heroku yet? You can run a single dyno instance (one running instance of your application) for free, including access to a shared Postgres database service. It's extremely popular among rubyists for good reason.
You should take a look at this screencast from peepcode for details about hosting your app using capistrano. It is about installing phusion-passenger but they also explain how you can host your application on 'Dreamhost'
I have just finished a Rails-application that I now want to upload to the web. It is a re-write of an existing application and I expect some 4 000 visitors a day with peaks to 10 000 a day at times.
I know Windows fairly well (have not used Windows server though).
I hardly know anything about Ubuntu or Linux
I want things nice and easy and don't want to spend too much of my time "hacking the server". I want to spend my time developing, not maintaining.
My budget is ~50$ a month at most for this project.
The database for the project is quite static (hardly any user generated data)
I am currently using WAMP & Mysql with Rails 3.0.3 on my local installation and it works fine most of the time but crashes quite often as well.
I am considering three ways of doing that:
Using Heroku
Seems quite easy (even though I haven't gotten it to work yet)
Also seems expensive, if I need more nodes. How many nodes should I expect to need?
Using a VPS Windows server
I know Windows and it would be fairly easy to install and get it set up
My friend (who is more of a Rails expert) says that Windows and Rails is not a good match.
My crashes on my local environment makes me nervous about this option
Using a VPS Ubuntu server
Seems to be the cheapest option (in terms of paying up-front)
Seems to be the most stable option
I don't know Ubuntu and I am not too eager to learn a whole new OS to get this set up.
Could you help me with directions? Is Windows server really bad for Rails?
Quite honestly, I think Windows would be the worst choice for you. The problem with Windows and Rails is that most of the gems are never designed to work with Windows, or the versions that do work with Windows are far outdated.
Using an Ubuntu VPS is a very viable option, would be your cheapest and most stable option. We use Amazon S3 services to run most of our web servers in the cloud. Like you said, it does require you to know and understand a *nix operating system to maintain.
Maybe for you, Heroku may be the best option. Heroku is super simple to setup your project on and then deploy. There are also pages of documentation to help you along the way. In a few basic commands from the terminal, your application is running. I often use Heroku as a 'staging' server to test application updates among beta users before pushing to production on S3. You also are not required to learn a new operating system to use it.
If you are running into problems with deploying to Heroku, please post the issues and we will gladly help you.
I would advise against a windows server. From my experience, the major ruby implementations are not optimized for windows - and run slowly. For the sake of your end-users, a rails stack on Linux may provide significant performance gains (or equally decrease your server budget).
With bundler and rails 3, the amount of maintenance work on the server should be minimal. Log in, deploy, log out. (look into tools like capistrano to make this even more straightforward).
By far the easiest production I've found so far is an Ubuntu server.
On Windows Rails tends to be slower and it's far simpler to setup something like passenger on *nix. If help is needed, there are more tutorials available.
My fastest setups have been Ubuntu Server and nginx.
PS. Rails 3.0 has gone beyond 3.0.3 so think about testing the latest version 8)
Heroku is delightfully easy to deploy to. If your database load is light, you can just use their shared 20GB PostgreSQL database ($15/mo). 2 dynos will cost you ($35/mo) so there's your $50 there. 2 should be fine to handle that traffic, and you can always scale during your high traffic times. Definitely would recommend adding the memcached add-on and utilize that as well. Install the New Relic add-on and you can analyze your traffic/load and scale accordingly.
I'd heavily advise against using Windows for a rails app deployment. Some gems compile slower on Windows, and some don't work at all.
I've worked with Heroku, but there are some complications with writing files to the Heroku instance as Heroku does not allow for local file writing. When working with Heroku, people usually offload write operations like file-upload to an Amazon S3 instance or Fog. In general, Heroku is really easy to deploy to, but when configuration comes along...it may be a bit more complicated than a VPS.
The best solution for me would be to go via VPS using Ubuntu. There's been a lot of documentation done on this, and you have more options with your configurations. In actuality, it's not so much different from setting up Ruby on Rails on a local Ubuntu development machine. If you need tips on how to deploy on Ubuntu, I've just recently written a guide on how to do so.
http://www.francisbautista.com/deploying-ruby-on-rails-apps-on-a-vps-nginx-passenger-capistrano/
I have a Ruby on Rails application that will be a CMS in way which means it's mostly DB intensive. I expect it to have decent amount of traffic so before designing I'm choosing what servers to use. Most important for me is performance.
I heard good things about Nginx and many developers in the Rails community recommends it my only concern about it was that its version is 0.8 which is Beta I believe so I was concerned about potential problems. What is your say?
Also, I want to decide between using Mongrel cluster or Phusion Passenger. What do you think?
I'm planning to user Ruby 1.9 as it has better performance that Ruby 1.8 and I will be using VPS to host my website.
My main things is performance even if it takes longer to setup one over the other.
Your opinion is highly appreciated.
Thanks,
Tam
I'd second for Passenger + Nginx. Very low memory and it's not too difficult to setup. What type of server are your deploying too? Specs? OS? I'd take that into consideration as well considering your available hardware. If you've got enough memory already, then it shouldn't be an issue whether its Passenger or Apache, just optimize and cache your app efficiently.
Two comments:
You can deploy any rails app to any of your mentioned servers, so no need to decide this once and for all now.
IMO mongrel clusters are no longer worth the trouble. Go for passenger on whatever server makes you happy.
Id recommend passenger nginx, the configs are nice and tidy plus the memory footprint is really low compared to passenger apache.
I read from some books that Phusion Passenger is the answer to easy Ruby on Rails deployment. But my friend said that first there was Apache + bunch of Mongrels, and then lighttpd, and then nginx, and now Passenger, and it seems endless...
he also said he uses dreamhost which uses Passenger, and sometimes he sees his request not being processed.
So I wonder if Passenger is the final answer to RoR deployment? do you use it and used the "ab" command to test if the site is doing quite well?
short answer: yes.
long answer: yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssss.
In all seriousness, Phusion Passenger and Ruby Enterprise Edition have taken out pretty much all of the pain of moving a Rails app into production. Previous approaches, including running a suite of Mongrels, required lots of setup surrounding starting, stopping, and recycling listener processes that Passenger handles transparently, or via simple Apache (or nginx) configuration options. And REE's complementary garbage collector means that forking off a new listener uses MUCH less memory, and is faster to boot (in Passenger's "smart" spawning mode).
Edit: #srboisvert makes a very good point; Passenger isn't the final answer to RoR deployment, but for now it's my favorite by far. One day, after a lot of hard engineering problems are solved, mainstream Ruby will probably move from hosting RoR using a multi-process model to a single-process model, which would make management even easier than with Passenger.
It's the best solution so far. I started deploying with FCGI and it was a pain. Then came mongrel and it was better. Then came mod_rails and it was WAY better.
Also a lot of large cool application are migrating to mod_rails including some by 37signals, so you know that's good.
I'll just end with a quote from DHH:
The one-piece solution with Phusion
Passenger
Once you've completed the incredibly
simple installation, you get an Apache
that acts as both web server, load
balancer, application server and
process watcher. You simply drop in
your application and touch
tmp/restart.txt when you want to
bounce it and bam, you're up and
running.
But somehow the message of Passenger
has been a little slow to sink in.
There's already a ton of big sites
running off it. Including Shopify,
MTV, Geni, Yammer, and we'll be moving
over first Ta-da List shortly, then
hopefully the rest of the 37signals
suite quickly thereafter.
So while there are still reasons to
run your own custom multi-tier setup
of manually configured pieces, just
like there are people shying away from
mod_php for their particulars, I think
we've finally settled on a default
answer. Something that doesn't require
you to really think about the first
deployment of your Rails application.
Something that just works out of the
box. Even if that box is a shared
host!
In conclusion, Rails is no longer hard
to deploy. Phusion Passenger has made
it ridiculously easy.
(via)
Yes, it is the easiest, fastest and most efficient solution.
After a lot of problems with gems like soap4r etc. had been resolved in recent releases, Passenger is the answer to deployment questions now.
We're running Apache/mod_rails in a balanced environment with HAProxy in front of 2 servers. It's much more reliable than our previous setup using Mongrel/Aapache.
It's very easy to take control over
the amount of Passenger processes running in Apache
the amount of Passenger processes running per application
and all that without the pain of tweaking a number of config files like mod_proxy, Apache.
setting up a virtual host and adding 3 lines to your Apache config is basically enough to get it running
Matt
Final Answer? Nothing is ever the final answer.
I'd say Passenger is the current answer though.
Yes. I've been running Nginx/Passenger in front of Apache for whatever still needs PHP since they released 2.2.0 a few weeks back. Especially with Ruby Enterprise Edition, it approaches what I would call "perfect".
I guess that now people will stick to mod_rails for many years. The module is really good. Configuration is dead simple. It will be hard to replace it with some better solution. Similar to mod_php. The only key component which is missing: Windows port.
In some situations (enterprise, etc) the JVM can also be a good option.
What are the major gotchas and tricks when running Rails on a small slice (256MB)? What is the best server setup for cramped quarters? Passenger, Nginx, Mongrel? What is the best background task processor in this kind of environment? What do you need to watch out for? I'd love to hear the stories of people who have done this and bumped into some of the virtual walls.
I'm running Passenger on a 256mb slicehost, no problems. Much, much, much easier to set up than any other alternative. For background stuff I use Starling and Workling and Ryan Bates has an excellent screencast on how to use both together.
Nginx proxying for a couple of mongrels. Updating gems can cause you to run out of memory, but this can be solved by downloading and compiling rubygems from source. You will have no problem using cron for background tasks as it is very lightweight.
On my 256 slice I run nginx in front of a pair of thin servers. Whatever you decide to go with make sure you're using god or monit to keep your stack in check.
I suggest Passenger for it's simplicity and smallish footprint. I have that on my VPS with several domains (256MB VPS on RailsPlayground) and no problems so far. Also, the Starling/Workling combination works pretty well or you could even just use the spawn plugin if your site isn't huge (it's dead simple).