Rails - Sep 2005 - How Far Can An Rails App Scale on Textdrive

Does anyone have any insight into how far a rails app can scale on
textdrive before you need to move to a dedicated server?

Thanks,
Nick
--
Nicholas Van Weerdenburg

* Nicholas Van Weerdenburg [2005-09-30 17:55]:
> Does anyone have any insight into how far a rails app can scale on
> textdrive before you need to move to a dedicated server?
Well first the server needs to stay up and online... 
http://forum.textdrive.com/viewforum.php?id=21

Seriously though, I often see fairly high loads on them, but I''d think
a
clear answer is not possible since it''s so dependent on what your app
(and its users) do. 

And you could consider a VPS-type solution somewhere perhaps as an
in-between step from shared to dedicated.


-- 

________________________________
toddgrimason*todd[ at ]slack.net

> Does anyone have any insight into how far a rails app can scale on
> textdrive before you need to move to a dedicated server?
I think its less a question of scale (as in number of hits), but
rather a question of criticality. Once its absolutely necessary that
the site is up always, you want go dedicated. No shared host,
TextDrive or otherwise, can guarantee that foul things won''t occur.

Of course there are no guarantees with dedicated servers either, but
at least you know its your problem when things go awry.
--
David Heinemeier Hansson
http://www.loudthinking.com -- Broadcasting Brain
http://www.basecamphq.com   -- Online project management
http://www.backpackit.com   -- Personal information manager
http://www.rubyonrails.com  -- Web-application framework

You might want to take a look at this thread:

http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?pid=50566#p50566

In a nutshell, we''re setting up a fully clustered, shared hosting
solution for Rails apps. This has two distinct advantages over normal
TxD shared hosting: higher availability (losing one server won''t take
your app down) and transparent load balancing for higher performance.

Shouldn''t be too much longer before we launch.

Cheers,
Ben

On 10/1/05, Nicholas Van Weerdenburg
<vanweerd-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Does anyone have any insight into how far a rails app can scale on
> textdrive before you need to move to a dedicated server?
>
> Thanks,
> Nick
> --
> Nicholas Van Weerdenburg
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

Oh heavens, talk about buyer''s remorse.

So buying that TxD lifetime hosting plan was a bad idea?


Ben Myles wrote:
> You might want to take a look at this thread:
> 
> http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?pid=50566#p50566
> 
> In a nutshell, we''re setting up a fully clustered, shared hosting
> solution for Rails apps. This has two distinct advantages over normal
> TxD shared hosting: higher availability (losing one server won''t
take
> your app down) and transparent load balancing for higher performance.
> 
> Shouldn''t be too much longer before we launch.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ben
> 
> On 10/1/05, Nicholas Van Weerdenburg
<vanweerd-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
>>Does anyone have any insight into how far a rails app can scale on
>>textdrive before you need to move to a dedicated server?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Nick
>>--
>>Nicholas Van Weerdenburg
>>_______________________________________________
>>Rails mailing list
>>Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
>>http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>>

On 10/3/05, San Quatre <sanzbox-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Oh heavens, talk about buyer''s remorse.
>
> So buying that TxD lifetime hosting plan was a bad idea?
Oh no, I wouldn''t say that. The new service will be purely for Rails
apps only, with no support for the many other (non-rails) features you
get on a normal TxD account. You also won''t have as much freedom as
you do on a normal account - think StrongSpace for rails apps. So
there''s pros and cons for both offerings.

Ben

But I guess that most of TextDrive customers went there because of
their Rails support or at least the chance of hosting a rails app on
the net.

Sure the forums, community are great and we learn a lot. But if it was
not for having rails hosting support most of us (TxD customers) would
choose it over other hosting places which cost less?

Speaking for myself i own a VCII account. Only went there because of
Rails. But most of the time everything is too slow. Apache proxying to
lighttpd crawls even for a simple plain login page (and have been
following forun post on how to squeeze some more perfo. from
configuration) . The best solution is to use the assigned port number
in the url which is an ugly solution. The same pages on the same
server but done in php are much faster and easy to setup.

So as TxD is launching a Rails shared hosting orientated service and
now I also think the VCII plan was a bad choice. Sure all the other
non-rails features are great, but at the same time useless if one
doesn''t use them. For these there are other cheaper options out there.

Maybe TxD should offer some kind of migration to VC## owners to this
new service even if that means getting less features. Any owner of
regular account have the chance to cancel it by the end of the month
or signed period and jump to the new service. We unfortunatly will be
stucked with the VC## forever, which is a long time I hope.

In the meantime I''m married to TXD and  just have to live with what I
have and move along.
As San Quatre wrote, I''m also feeling buyer''s remorse.


Jorge



On 10/2/05, Ben Myles <ben.myles-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> On 10/3/05, San Quatre
<sanzbox-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > Oh heavens, talk about buyer''s remorse.
> >
> > So buying that TxD lifetime hosting plan was a bad idea?
>
> Oh no, I wouldn''t say that. The new service will be purely for
Rails
> apps only, with no support for the many other (non-rails) features you
> get on a normal TxD account. You also won''t have as much freedom
as
> you do on a normal account - think StrongSpace for rails apps. So
> there''s pros and cons for both offerings.
>
> Ben
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

--
-------------------------------
Jorge Sousa

On Sun, Oct 02, 2005, Jorge Sousa wrote:
> Speaking for myself i own a VCII account. Only went there because of
> Rails. But most of the time everything is too slow. Apache proxying to
> lighttpd crawls even for a simple plain login page (and have been
> following forun post on how to squeeze some more perfo. from
> configuration) . The best solution is to use the assigned port number
> in the url which is an ugly solution. The same pages on the same
> server but done in php are much faster and easy to setup.
The slow login problems is a problem between the way Apache proxies
keep-alive requests and lighttpd handles said requests.  I''ll betcha if
you set the following line in your lighttpd config, you''ll see better
performance.  It fixed every slowness issue I was having:

server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0

As for the rest, don''t know what to tell you.  I use TxD pretty much
exclusively for Rails hosting (4 apps + trac/svn, but that''s only out
of
convenience).  I understand how you feel, I''ve been disappointed with
TxD recently too... On the other hand, I don''t have a VC account so
I''m
not sure I get to complain as much as you do.

Hopefully time will smooth it out.  TxD has shown themselves to be
remarkably customer-focused, so your wishes may not go unanswered.

Ben

On 10/1/05, David Heinemeier Hansson
<david.heinemeier-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> > Does anyone have any insight into how far a rails app can scale on
> > textdrive before you need to move to a dedicated server?
>
> I think its less a question of scale (as in number of hits), but
> rather a question of criticality. Once its absolutely necessary that
> the site is up always, you want go dedicated. No shared host,
> TextDrive or otherwise, can guarantee that foul things won''t
occur.
>
> Of course there are no guarantees with dedicated servers either, but
> at least you know its your problem when things go awry.
> --
> David Heinemeier Hansson
> http://www.loudthinking.com -- Broadcasting Brain
> http://www.basecamphq.com   -- Online project management
> http://www.backpackit.com   -- Personal information manager
> http://www.rubyonrails.com  -- Web-application framework
>
Good points. In my case, I can live with some level of downtime, but
need to quantify it and make a plan for scaling up.

Does anyone have recommendations on dedicated hosts? Or virtual hosts?
If virtual, how is the current stability of virtualized platforms in
Linux/BSD world (e.g. user-mode linux, etc.).

Thanks,
Nick
--
Nicholas Van Weerdenburg

On 10/2/05, Ben Bleything <ben-TGHtUsa5cOzMFIMGWPqnnw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 02, 2005, Jorge Sousa wrote:
> > Speaking for myself i own a VCII account. Only went there because of
> > Rails. But most of the time everything is too slow. Apache proxying to
> > lighttpd crawls even for a simple plain login page (and have been
> > following forun post on how to squeeze some more perfo. from
> > configuration) . The best solution is to use the assigned port number
> > in the url which is an ugly solution. The same pages on the same
> > server but done in php are much faster and easy to setup.
>
> The slow login problems is a problem between the way Apache proxies
> keep-alive requests and lighttpd handles said requests.  I''ll
betcha if
> you set the following line in your lighttpd config, you''ll see
better
> performance.  It fixed every slowness issue I was having:
>
> server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0
>
> ....
>
> Ben
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>
Wow. This made a huge difference. Some pages were taking almost a
minute, now load in seconds.

Thanks!
Nick
--
Nicholas Van Weerdenburg

> The slow login problems is a problem between the way Apache proxies
> keep-alive requests and lighttpd handles said requests.  I''ll
betcha if
> you set the following line in your lighttpd config, you''ll see
better
> performance.  It fixed every slowness issue I was having:
>
> server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0
I think that''s fixed in lighttpd 1.4.5.  I''ll test once
it''s upgraded
on my server...

--
rick
http://techno-weenie.net

On Sun, Oct 02, 2005, Rick Olson wrote:
> I think that''s fixed in lighttpd 1.4.5.  I''ll test once
it''s upgraded
> on my server...
Let''s hope so, it''s kind of a gross hack.

Ben

On Sun, 2005-10-02 at 16:14 -0700, Ben Bleything wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 02, 2005, Jorge Sousa wrote:
> > Speaking for myself i own a VCII account. Only went there because of
> > Rails. But most of the time everything is too slow. Apache proxying to
> > lighttpd crawls even for a simple plain login page (and have been
> > following forun post on how to squeeze some more perfo. from
> > configuration) . The best solution is to use the assigned port number
> > in the url which is an ugly solution. The same pages on the same
> > server but done in php are much faster and easy to setup.
> 
> The slow login problems is a problem between the way Apache proxies
> keep-alive requests and lighttpd handles said requests.  I''ll
betcha if
> you set the following line in your lighttpd config, you''ll see
better
> performance.  It fixed every slowness issue I was having:
> 
> server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0
Woah. Thanks Ben! I had the same issue with Lighttpd stuff through
Apache proxies. Not now. :-)

-Robby

-- 
/******************************************************
* Robby Russell, Owner.Developer.Geek
* PLANET ARGON, Open Source Solutions & Web Hosting
* Portland, Oregon | p: 503.351.4730 | f: 815.642.4068
* www.planetargon.com | www.robbyonrails.com
* Programming Rails | www.programmingrails.com
*******************************************************/

I just compiled and installed 1.4.5 - seems to be fixed for me.

On 3 Oct 2005, at 03:39, Ben Bleything wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 02, 2005, Rick Olson wrote:
>> I think that''s fixed in lighttpd 1.4.5.  I''ll test
once it''s upgraded
>> on my server...
>
> Let''s hope so, it''s kind of a gross hack.
>
> Ben
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

I raised a ticket for this to be added to the textdrive faq last week,
but it hasn''t gone in yet.

Jan told me it''s not an issue with SVN lighttpd, so should be sorted
in the next release.

On 03/10/05, Robby Russell <robby-/Lcn8Y7Ot69QmPsQ1CNsNQ@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-10-02 at 16:14 -0700, Ben Bleything wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 02, 2005, Jorge Sousa wrote:
> > > Speaking for myself i own a VCII account. Only went there because
of
> > > Rails. But most of the time everything is too slow. Apache
proxying to
> > > lighttpd crawls even for a simple plain login page (and have been
> > > following forun post on how to squeeze some more perfo. from
> > > configuration) . The best solution is to use the assigned port
number
> > > in the url which is an ugly solution. The same pages on the same
> > > server but done in php are much faster and easy to setup.
> >
> > The slow login problems is a problem between the way Apache proxies
> > keep-alive requests and lighttpd handles said requests.  I''ll
betcha if
> > you set the following line in your lighttpd config, you''ll
see better
> > performance.  It fixed every slowness issue I was having:
> >
> > server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0
>
> Woah. Thanks Ben! I had the same issue with Lighttpd stuff through
> Apache proxies. Not now. :-)
>
> -Robby
>
> --
> /******************************************************
> * Robby Russell, Owner.Developer.Geek
> * PLANET ARGON, Open Source Solutions & Web Hosting
> * Portland, Oregon | p: 503.351.4730 | f: 815.642.4068
> * www.planetargon.com | www.robbyonrails.com
> * Programming Rails | www.programmingrails.com
> *******************************************************/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

--
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns

This may be a stupid question, but have you switched to the production
environment in config/environment.rb?  My typo blog on TxD was loading
really slowly, with just apache, no lighttpd, until I remembered to do
that.

David 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rails-bounces-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
[mailto:rails-
> bounces-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of
Jorge Sousa
> Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 6:35 PM
> To: rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> Subject: Re: [Rails] Re: How Far Can An Rails App Scale on Textdrive
> 
> But I guess that most of TextDrive customers went there because of
> their Rails support or at least the chance of hosting a rails app on
> the net.
> 
> Sure the forums, community are great and we learn a lot. But if it was
> not for having rails hosting support most of us (TxD customers) would
> choose it over other hosting places which cost less?
> 
> Speaking for myself i own a VCII account. Only went there because of
> Rails. But most of the time everything is too slow. Apache proxying to
> lighttpd crawls even for a simple plain login page (and have been
> following forun post on how to squeeze some more perfo. from
> configuration) . The best solution is to use the assigned port number
> in the url which is an ugly solution. The same pages on the same
> server but done in php are much faster and easy to setup.
> 
> So as TxD is launching a Rails shared hosting orientated service and
> now I also think the VCII plan was a bad choice. Sure all the other
> non-rails features are great, but at the same time useless if one
> doesn''t use them. For these there are other cheaper options out
there.
> 
> Maybe TxD should offer some kind of migration to VC## owners to this
> new service even if that means getting less features. Any owner of
> regular account have the chance to cancel it by the end of the month
> or signed period and jump to the new service. We unfortunatly will be
> stucked with the VC## forever, which is a long time I hope.
> 
> In the meantime I''m married to TXD and  just have to live with
what I
> have and move along.
> As San Quatre wrote, I''m also feeling buyer''s remorse.
> 
> 
> Jorge
> 
> 
> 
> On 10/2/05, Ben Myles
<ben.myles-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > On 10/3/05, San Quatre
<sanzbox-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > > Oh heavens, talk about buyer''s remorse.
> > >
> > > So buying that TxD lifetime hosting plan was a bad idea?
> >
> > Oh no, I wouldn''t say that. The new service will be purely
for Rails
> > apps only, with no support for the many other (non-rails) features
you
> > get on a normal TxD account. You also won''t have as much
freedom as
> > you do on a normal account - think StrongSpace for rails apps. So
> > there''s pros and cons for both offerings.
> >
> > Ben
> > _______________________________________________
> > Rails mailing list
> > Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
> >
> 
> 
> --
> -------------------------------
> Jorge Sousa
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

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>
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2005 21:25:07 -0400
> From: Nicholas Van Weerdenburg
<vanweerd-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
> Subject: Re: [Rails] How Far Can An Rails App Scale on Textdrive
>
> Does anyone have recommendations on dedicated hosts? Or virtual hosts?
> If virtual, how is the current stability of virtualized platforms in
> Linux/BSD world (e.g. user-mode linux, etc.).

http://www.linode.com is a Linux virtual hosting service that I''ve
heard
good things about.

I tried that little one liner ("server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0")
on my
Textdrive account and it worked wonders.

Chad


_______________________________________________
Rails mailing list
Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

>
> Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 04:22:40 +0100
> From: Michael Houghton
<mike-GDRLylaSUshUrdklU0bPTip2UmYkHbXO@public.gmane.org>
> Subject: Re: [Rails] Re: How Far Can An Rails App Scale on Textdrive
> To: rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org

I just compiled and installed 1.4.5 - seems to be fixed for me.


Do you know if they have they fixed the file upload issues, that we can
upload large files without the problems it was having?

Chad


_______________________________________________
Rails mailing list
Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

At TextDrive only have PRODUCTION environment''s enabled. The other two
i use only at home during development.

I''ll bet there are some guys running development environments and even
development directly on top of TxD servers. It souldn''t be allowed,
but then that''s something dificult to control.

Ben''s tip "server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0" seem to  boost
everything a bit.
Thanks

Jorge Sousa

On 10/3/05, David Chilton
<david_chilton-Yt2XQmYAGVYAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> This may be a stupid question, but have you switched to the production
> environment in config/environment.rb?  My typo blog on TxD was loading
> really slowly, with just apache, no lighttpd, until I remembered to do
> that.
>
> David
>
>

>  Do you know if they have they fixed the file upload issues, that we can
> upload large files without the problems it was having?
Apparently so: http://lighttpd.net/download/

excerpt from the lighty ML:

"the upload problem is fixed *YEAH* by buffering larger uploads to disk.
This helps to keep the memory usage low as possible every for larger
uploads. In the tests several ISO images of Fedora Core 4 CDs have been
moved via webdav a mem-usage of 3-4Mbyte."


--
rick
http://techno-weenie.net

On 10/3/05, CLung <chad.lung-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
>
> >
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2005 21:25:07 -0400
> > From: Nicholas Van Weerdenburg <
vanweerd-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Rails] How Far Can An Rails App Scale on Textdrive
> >
> > Does anyone have recommendations on dedicated hosts? Or virtual hosts?
> > If virtual, how is the current stability of virtualized platforms in
> > Linux/BSD world (e.g. user-mode linux, etc.).
>
>  http://www.linode.com is a Linux virtual hosting service that
I''ve heard
> good things about.
>
>  I tried that little one liner ("server.max-keep-alive-requests =
0") on my
> Textdrive account and it worked wonders.
>
>  Chad
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>
>
>
Thanks. Looks like a interesting service.

--
Nicholas Van Weerdenburg