Re: scalability

Phlip
Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:38:08 -0000

johntmarino wrote:

> could ror support a service on the scale of myspace? i''ve been
reading
> about problems with the types of databses that ruby can work with?

RoR is a member of the "LAMP" category of websites - Linux, Apache,
MySQL,
and a Perl-like language.

Word on the street is Google uses LAMP, including the MySQL. I don''t
know
how they cluster their MySQL databases, or if they simply write everything
to work with a distributed set of databases. But in general the LAMP model
scales by running the slow soft front-end language (Perl, Python, Ruby,
etc.) on thousands of cheap load-balanced servers. Then the database runs on
one fast expensive server, or possibly on a cluster of servers.

Note that "Google" refers to the math term for (IIRC) 10^100. A big
number.

Ruby is hardly an optimal language. A few method calls may result in tens of
thousands of CPU operations. Apache and MySQL, by contrast, are written in C
and painstakingly optimized. So you throw cheap hardware at the Ruby layer,
and get the best hardware for the C layer. You can scale when Rails pages
don''t abuse their session variable, and they run as event-driven as
possible.

--
  Phlip
  http://www.greencheese.us/ZeekLand <-- NOT a blog!!!