Mongrel Cluster vs. Apache-FCGI

Ruby Apps Radiant CMS
1

Hi folks,

I recently got my rails app to serve with a mongrel cluster with a
balancer in front of it and Apache Proxying in front of that. That app
used to run on rails-Apache-FCGI straight and I really can’t tell the
difference performance-wise. Granted, the point of a cluster and
balancer is for heavy loads not just one request, but there’s a bit
diminishing returns going on with low traffic websites (< 5K page
views/week). Has any of you done any actual performance analysis on
rails-mongrel cluster vs rails-apache-fcgi? Just curious.

2

Hello,

I have been working with Radiant for the last several months, and I have
noticed that when I am logged in to the admin interface, my session will
timeout, and force me to re-login to the admin interface.
I was wondering if there was a Radiant session variable that I could
change
to prevent this.

I am mainly running Windows XP/Firefox 2.x connecting to a remote
Radiant
install.
I have looked within the app tree to find a session timeout variable,
with
no sucess.
Does this tie in to the basic Radiant cache timeout of 5 minutes, or is
there another variable that I could manipulate?

Thanks in advance,
Kevin Bowen

3

Kevin Bowen wrote:

I have been working with Radiant for the last several months, and I have
noticed that when I am logged in to the admin interface, my session will
timeout, and force me to re-login to the admin interface.
I was wondering if there was a Radiant session variable that I could change
to prevent this.

I’m not sure if there is or not. By default Radiant uses the standard
Rails session stuff. So if there is a setting to configure this, it
would be a Rails configuration option, not a Radiant.

–
John L.
http://wiseheartdesign.com

4

IIRC, ruby-lang.org runs Apache 2.0.x with mod_fcgid, quite happily on a
pretty vanilla box. In the past, I’ve had memory-leak and
zombie-process issues with FCGI (both lighttpd and Apache). Your
experience may vary. I currently prefer proxy/balancing/Mongrel, but I
also like Litespeed for its ease of use and nice admin interface. LSAPI
performs very well in comparison to FCGI.

Sean

5

I went from a FCGI on shared hosting to Nginx/Mongrel cluster on a VPS
nad it was night and day. I don’t have any hard numbers, and I could
have been more server resources than anything, but it was
mind-blowingly faster.

BJ Clark

6

Ruben D. Orduz wrote:

I recently got my rails app to serve with a mongrel cluster with a
balancer in front of it and Apache Proxying in front of that. That app
used to run on rails-Apache-FCGI straight and I really can’t tell the
difference performance-wise. Granted, the point of a cluster and
balancer is for heavy loads not just one request, but there’s a bit
diminishing returns going on with low traffic websites (< 5K page
views/week). Has any of you done any actual performance analysis on
rails-mongrel cluster vs rails-apache-fcgi? Just curious.

I’m not aware of any official performance testing for a rails-mongrel
cluster vs rails-apache-fcgi.

–
John L.
http://wiseheartdesign.com