# Do I need more than one mongrel?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-i-need-more-than-one-mongrel/91096>\
**Category:** Deployment\
**Created:** [April 4, 2007, 5:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-i-need-more-than-one-mongrel/91096 "2007-04-04T17:49:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![taylorstrait](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@taylorstrait](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/taylorstrait)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2007, 5:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-i-need-more-than-one-mongrel/91096/1 "2007-04-04T17:49:13Z")

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Rookie here. I have a small site servicing only \< 100 people with hits  
concentrated ~4 days per month. Do I need a mongrel cluster or will one  
mongrel be enough? Is it worth the hassel in a small site? My VPS has  
96M of RAM running CentOS. Thanks

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**Author:** ![taylorstrait](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@taylorstrait](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/taylorstrait)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2007, 6:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-i-need-more-than-one-mongrel/91096/2 "2007-04-04T18:02:29Z")

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On 4/4/07, Taylor S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Rookie here. I have a small site servicing only \< 100 people with hits  
> concentrated ~4 days per month. Do I need a mongrel cluster or will one  
> mongrel be enough? Is it worth the hassel in a small site? My VPS has  
> 96M of RAM running CentOS. Thanks

You’re setup will be very tight with 96 megs of ram, no matter what  
you do. You should start with one mongrel and stress test it, to see  
if it falls over or gets killed due to hitting memory limits. If you  
do anything like file uploads, image processing, loading massive  
result sets, you will definitely need much more memory.

- Rob

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**Author:** ![taylorstrait](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@taylorstrait](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/taylorstrait)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2007, 7:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-i-need-more-than-one-mongrel/91096/3 "2007-04-04T19:55:48Z")

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You may benefit in a memory-constrained environment from something  
other than Rmagick…

– [http://seattlerb.rubyforge.org/ImageScience.html](http://seattlerb.rubyforge.org/ImageScience.html)

–

On Apr 4, 9:17 am, Taylor S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

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**Author:** ![taylorstrait](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@taylorstrait](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/taylorstrait)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2007, 6:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-i-need-more-than-one-mongrel/91096/4 "2007-04-04T18:17:44Z")

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I am doing image cropping and thumbnailing with Rmagick, but only on  
initial upload - then it is handled by the file system. Otherwise the  
system is just selecting and retrieving AR objects. I can go up to 128M  
for +$5 / month. Should I just wait and see?