Ideal Rails Server

Question

What is the ideal rails server? Lets assume its on a VPS, such as Linode. Lets assume that any of the sites won't become the next twitter, but they should scale well. It must also support multiple sites and all sites are rails 3. And the database must be on the same server (for now).

Should it use apache or nginx?

Ruby Enterprise Edition or just normal Ruby?

Ideal linux distro?

MySQL, PostgreSQL or something else?

How should the directories be laid out (where to put your rails sites or anything else)?

Deployment options?

Anything else?

Answer 1

Should it use apache or nginx? Nginx seems to be the preferred route here, unless you need specific Apache features. If you're using Passenger, both Apache and Nginx are supported. More on Passenger here.

Ruby Enterprise Edition or just normal Ruby? I'm pretty sure REE is only available for Ruby 1.8, which isn't really the preferred version for Rails 3 anymore. Rails 3 had some problems with 1.8, but they might have fixed them by now. Generally, though, Ruby 1.9.2 runs Rails 3 well.

Ideal linux distro? This really doesn't matter. If you're not sure, Ubuntu is a good choice as there's a lot of knowledge out there, and it's pretty easy to use. Slicehost has a bunch of great articles on getting started with a VPS, and a lot of them focus specifically on Ubuntu: http://articles.slicehost.com/.

MySQL, PostgreSQL or something else? This is definitely subjective. MySQL is definitely the most common out there, and if you're really unsure, it's a good starting point. However, people often argue that PostgreSQL is cleaner and easier to use that MySQL. If you're just starting, I would recommend MySQL just because of the amount of information out there already.

How should the directories be laid out (where to put your rails sites or anything else)? You can put your rails project anywhere you like, so I like to just put it in my home directory. Just make sure that your web server has access to your static assets.

Deployment options? Capistrano is popular. You just commit your changes and cap deploy, and you'll be up and running.

Anything else? If this all seems overwhelming, look into a simpler solution like Heroku. They set everything up for you, and, while you loose some flexibility, you won't have to worry about any of this. Their pricing isn't too bad, and they offer a free option.

Answer 2

I think kyl summed it up pretty well. But I figured I would let you know exactly what I have been using since rails beta4 (and now with RC). This setup has worked well for me:

Rackspace Cloud servers - Gives you full control of the server. You can resize your servers on the fly. You can also take snapshot images if you want to duplicate your setup for another site. Its cheap and in my opinion better than Amazon cloud.

CentOS 5.4 - solid, but as kyl mentioned probably any distro will work fine.

Ruby 1.9.2RC 2 - no problems so far on Rails 3 for me. Will definitely use Ruby Enterprise when they port it to 1.9.2 (not sure if that is in the works, though??)

Nginx - fast and lightweight. I like it much better than apache. Works well in front of Passenger, mongrel and thin.

MySQL - just personal preference for this. I have been using it for years. It is easy to set up a master/slave or master/master config if you need to scale. Some people have success just using sqlite, but I prefer something a bit more robust.

Github - a must for me for source code control. Bundler works very well with github

Application Server - I am still debating what to do about this. I was happy with Passenger 2.2.15 until I saw how long it took to spawn new ruby processes to handle concurrency. It takes up to 30 seconds to spawn a new process for me and the app is locked, so no requests can go thru while it is spawning. I am investigating right now if it is my app or Rails 3 that takes so long to load. This problem is fixed with Passenger 3, though. Hopefully that will be released soon. As a result of this, I am probably going to use Thin or Mongrel until Passenger 3 comes out.

Capistrano - works great for Rails 3. I would recommend finding some cap recipes for versioning your app with git tags... or just write your own.

Anything else? Not really related to the server, but I would recommend using the new plugin API for any part of your app that is reusable. Read up on railties and engines. Its simple to create a gem with Jeweler and version it with github using jeweler rake tasks. Then you can deploy from a github tag or from master, by adding the gem and github source in your Gemfile and bundle install or update it. I recently ported all of my common app code (blog, authentication, etc..) to Rails 3 engines and it is working great. And any time I need to reuse that code, I just drop it in the new app's Gemfile.