Comments on: Ruby on Rails Scalability – Is it a Problem? http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/ It's Just Links Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:47:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Dave Cornelius http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/comment-page-1/#comment-31733 Dave Cornelius Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:10:42 +0000 http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/#comment-31733 When scaling up a Rails app, remember to use caching wherever possible. There are a few caching modules available in Rails (actions, fragments, pages) that are simple to plug in, though I've found fragment caching to be the most useful. Just as an example, this entire blog post with comments only needs to be regenerated when a new comment is submitted. There's your fragment. The further you shift to static content, the further the Rails vs. PHP vs. ... argument shifts to Apache vs. Lighttpd vs. ... When scaling up a Rails app, remember to use caching wherever possible. There are a few caching modules available in Rails (actions, fragments, pages) that are simple to plug in, though I’ve found fragment caching to be the most useful.

Just as an example, this entire blog post with comments only needs to be regenerated when a new comment is submitted. There’s your fragment.

The further you shift to static content, the further the Rails vs. PHP vs. … argument shifts to Apache vs. Lighttpd vs. …

]]> By: Arun Vijayan http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/comment-page-1/#comment-13850 Arun Vijayan Mon, 14 May 2007 12:39:47 +0000 http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/#comment-13850 Ofcourse RoR is slower than PHP. But the amount of work you need to spend on developing it in PHP/JAVA (unless you are using any MVC framework) will be very different. If your Java app scales like 60requests/second, for RoR it can be 40r/sec. You setup more machines to scale it to reach 80r/sec. You spend less on development and spend more on hardware. At the end of the day you will find out why 'Build first, scale later' will happen to be economical. Simple funda. See wonderful casestudies on Rails scaling http://www.webforth.com/2007/04/scaling-twitter-to-the-maximum Ofcourse RoR is slower than PHP. But the amount of work you need to spend on developing it in PHP/JAVA (unless you are using any MVC framework) will be very different.

If your Java app scales like 60requests/second, for RoR it can be 40r/sec. You setup more machines to scale it to reach 80r/sec. You spend less on development and spend more on hardware. At the end of the day you will find out why ‘Build first, scale later’ will happen to be economical. Simple funda.

See wonderful casestudies on Rails scaling
http://www.webforth.com/2007/04/scaling-twitter-to-the-maximum

]]> By: Karol Zapolski http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/comment-page-1/#comment-3829 Karol Zapolski Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:32:01 +0000 http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/#comment-3829 As far as I see RoR is more then twice slower then php - If you add unstability it's obvious : it's too early for RoR to become a solution for big apps. I'm dealing with two product in my company - one is RoR/Mongrel based and second PHP/Java/Apache/Tomcat based : we were many times in trouble because of RoR. You can optimize PHP much better even with some own c++ php modules it's possible to get rid of Java/Tomcat part and that will make it double fast - I have to say - RoR it's getting better and better - but as I mentioned before - it's too early for ROR As far as I see RoR is more then twice slower then php – If you add unstability it’s obvious : it’s too early for RoR to become a solution for big apps. I’m dealing with two product in my company – one is RoR/Mongrel based and second PHP/Java/Apache/Tomcat based : we were many times in trouble because of RoR. You can optimize PHP much better even with some own c++ php modules it’s possible to get rid of Java/Tomcat part and that will make it double fast – I have to say – RoR it’s getting better and better – but as I mentioned before – it’s too early for ROR

]]> By: Tony Spencer http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/comment-page-1/#comment-595 Tony Spencer Sat, 02 Dec 2006 02:01:23 +0000 http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/#comment-595 Hiten and I chatted on the phone this week and I must say that even though he prefaced the conversation by stating that he wasn't a techie, he spoke more like a system architect than any other CEO I've met! Dude knows his shit. So in a nutshell Hiten tells me : Rails scales fine. Great. Fantastic even. To speed up click tracking they've moved that to native C. Rails can easily handle 10's of millions of pageviews a day. Sweet. Hiten and I chatted on the phone this week and I must say that even though he prefaced the conversation by stating that he wasn’t a techie, he spoke more like a system architect than any other CEO I’ve met! Dude knows his shit.

So in a nutshell Hiten tells me :

Rails scales fine. Great. Fantastic even.
To speed up click tracking they’ve moved that to native C.
Rails can easily handle 10’s of millions of pageviews a day.

Sweet.

]]> By: Tony Spencer http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/comment-page-1/#comment-594 Tony Spencer Mon, 27 Nov 2006 21:13:32 +0000 http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/#comment-594 Oh cool and thanks for giving more information Hiten! I'm curious if the issue is with the reporting side of the app or with persisting the clicks in a DB? Can you go into detail as to how Ruby on Rails is specifically causing scalability issues? Oh cool and thanks for giving more information Hiten! I’m curious if the issue is with the reporting side of the app or with persisting the clicks in a DB?

Can you go into detail as to how Ruby on Rails is specifically causing scalability issues?

]]> By: Hiten Shah http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/comment-page-1/#comment-593 Hiten Shah Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:22:30 +0000 http://www.tonyspencer.com/2006/11/26/ruby-on-rails-scalability-is-it-a-problem/#comment-593 Tony, The issue we have experienced Crazy Egg are not based on the fact that we serve a lot of pageviews per day, but instead are related to what our service is doing. The websites that you mentioned above have significant amount of pageviews and there is a lot of documentation available as to how to scale those types of websites. Crazy Egg is essentially an analytics product where people put a javascript code on their website, so we can track the clicks on their webpages. These are the same types of issues that MeasureMap has in relation to Rubyonrails and scaling an analytics application using Rubyonrails. We have actually made significant progress since we launched about 3 months ago and are scaling Crazy Egg successfully as we speak :-) Tony,

The issue we have experienced Crazy Egg are not based on the fact that we serve a lot of pageviews per day, but instead are related to what our service is doing. The websites that you mentioned above have significant amount of pageviews and there is a lot of documentation available as to how to scale those types of websites. Crazy Egg is essentially an analytics product where people put a javascript code on their website, so we can track the clicks on their webpages. These are the same types of issues that MeasureMap has in relation to Rubyonrails and scaling an analytics application using Rubyonrails. We have actually made significant progress since we launched about 3 months ago and are scaling Crazy Egg successfully as we speak :-)

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