On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Greg Lazarev <lists at ruby-forum.com>
wrote:
> Why do I need a cluster? Why can''t I just run:
>
> mongrel_rails start -n 3
That starts 3 mongrel instances, each listening on a different port.
> wouldn''t that mean I have 3 mongrel servers running and they can
handle
> more load? Or do I still need something in front of these 3 servers to
> distribute requests to them. Why do people use Apache infront of
> Mongrel? So what about Pound?
People put something in front of the mongrels because they need a way
to balance the load, which is all coming into one ip/port, across
multiple processes, each of which are listening on a separate port.
This mechanism can be a web server with proxying capabilities, like
Apache or nginx, a proxy with web serving capabilities, like
Swiftiply, or a straight proxy like Pound or HAProxy.
Kirk Haines