Nervetree

I just had to redeploy a rails site I wrote for Ameriprise to a different server. Originally I used Mongrel, then Mongrel Cluster, behind modproxybalancer, It was deployed on Ubuntu 7.10.

The new server is Ubuntu 8.04. Since it was a different version of Ubuntu, I couldn’t just tar up the /etc/apache2 directory, I had to redeploy. I had some maintenance issues with the old Mongrel cluster setup, specifically when other people screw with the server and mess up Mongrel. I heard about passenger or ”mod_rails” and thought I’d give it a try.

It was a breeze to set up. And worked as advertised, rails apps deploy as easily as a php app. Just point the virtualhost DocumentRoot to the /app/public and you are done.

It’s as fast as Mongrel and WAY WAY easier to use. I think this will be THE lynch pin that will really let the rails get big.

People don’t give enough credence to easy setup. I’ve worked with server apps that take WEEKS to get set up, and even then, you don’t really know if it’s done correctly. Difficult to setup, simply means difficult to setup, not better. I can battle with a server for 2 weeks and get some pride that I did it, or set it up easily and play with my child, and get pride in that.

Thankfully Rails in general isn’t that difficult. I’ve been coding rails since version 0.7 or so, there have been alot of different server configs to learn, each better than the last in some way. My take on the whole evolution of rails deployments is this: Even if performance is slightly LOWER, I will choose ease of use any day, mod_rails is that choice.