Is DRb server *really* required in production mode?

Ruby Apps Ferret
1

Greetings,

I’m certainly :slight_smile: too thick, but after reading Ferret and AAF’s
documentation I’m still wondering if I really need a DRb server in
production.

At the moment, the planned structure for production mode is a single
server running the app with Apache and fastcgi; as far as I know, Ferret
is multithread-safe, isn’t it? So, is a DRb server required to avoid any
concurrent access problem in this scenario?

Let’s say we’re going to switch to a bunch of mongrels, still keeping
everything on a single server: now the DRb server would be really
necessary, right? I mean, there would be multiple processess trying to
access the index to read and possibly update it, so here the DRb server
would save the day, right?

Thanks for your patience :slight_smile:

2

Hi Emanuele,

Mi dispiace, volgio aiutarlo en Italiano ma mio Italiano e non buon.

So, Ferret is thread-safe yes, but Rails is not - each instance of Rails
fastcgi will be running in a separate process (with a separate Ferret et
al.)

So, if your initial plan is for only one fastcgi process then you’ll be
fine. If you will be having multiple fastcgi processes then you may
encounter problems without the DRb server.

Whether it’s a cluster of mongrels of a cluster of fastcgis, they are
separate processes either way.

John.

On Thu, 2007-06-14 at 09:34 +0200, Emanuele wrote:

Let’s say we’re going to switch to a bunch of mongrels, still keeping
everything on a single server: now the DRb server would be really
necessary, right? I mean, there would be multiple processess trying to
access the index to read and possibly update it, so here the DRb server
would save the day, right?

Thanks for your patience :slight_smile:

–
http://johnleach.co.uk

3

John L. wrote:

So, Ferret is thread-safe yes, but Rails is not - each instance of Rails
fastcgi will be running in a separate process (with a separate Ferret et
al.)

Doh! You’re right, putting it in this way I understand the situation
more clearly.

Whether it’s a cluster of mongrels of a cluster of fastcgis, they are
separate processes either way.

Thanks for your help. I’ll give the DRb server a try, hoping for the
best :slight_smile: