# Mongrel/nginx vs mod\_rails **URL:** \ **Category:** Deployment\ **Created:** [September 16, 2008, 4:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675 "2008-09-16T04:11:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2008, 4:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/1 "2008-09-16T04:11:31Z")
Does anyone have any recommendations when to use mod\_rails vs a mongrel/nginx stack? Is one better for low-ram situations or is there a clear winner performance-wise regardless of hardware? Thx, Vince ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 12:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/2 "2008-09-17T00:41:58Z")
Vince, I’d suggest sticking with mongrel/nginx for now. We’ve had a number of attempted mod\_rails deployments. All of them have had various issues, ranging between annoying and catastrophic. We currently only have one customer using mod\_rails, and we have had to restart apache and manually kill off the rogue passenger processes every week or two just to keep them up and running. This is just what I’ve seen on our end, and there could very well be people out there using it with no problems, but my suggestion is to stick with mongrel/nginx for the time being until mod\_rails has had a bit more time in the wild to root out any issues. On Sep 15, 7:11 pm, “Vince W.” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 12:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/3 "2008-09-17T00:58:56Z")
> I’d suggest sticking with mongrel/nginx for now. We’ve had a number of > attempted mod\_rails deployments. All of them have had various issues, > ranging between annoying and catastrophic. We currently only have one > customer using mod\_rails, and we have had to restart apache and > manually kill off the rogue passenger processes every week or two just > to keep them up and running. On the flip side, we have a number of customers running mod\_rails in production (as well as our shared hosting platform that’s utilizing mod\_rails) that haven’t had any problems. We’ve been very happy with the platform. Our recommendation for new users is if they have two servers that are load balanced, to try mod\_rails on one and see how it goes. More often than not, they end up switching all their servers to it. – Jesse P. Blue Box Group, LLC p. 800-613-4305 x 801 ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 1:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/4 "2008-09-17T01:08:55Z")
We’ve had good results with mod\_rails in some instances. Our main servers remain as Litespeed, but that too has its issues, as sometimes Litespeed RailsRunner processes hang around even after you shut it down, or restart it, leaving instances of old code. Major downsides to a mongrel type environment is the care and feeding of the mongrel pack itself, and that if you’re running many sites on the same machine, it can be resource intensive with lots of mongrels hanging around doing nothing. Litespeed and mod\_rails will spawn runners as required. In one environment (primarily intranet) on ubuntu, we have had to restart apache/mod\_rails like once every 2 days. In another environment with Centos, things have been rock solid. There are certainly a few bugs, but if you have an environment where multiple sites are on the same box, either Litespeed or mod\_rails beats mongrels hands down in terms of just maintenance, deployment, and, surprisingly speed too. - Ericson S. CTO Funadvice [http://www.funadvice.com](http://www.funadvice.com) ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2008, 9:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/5 "2008-09-20T21:42:56Z")
We run a production CommunityEngine driven site using Passenger without any problems so far. Before we’ve used mongrel behind an Apache using mod\_proxy\_balancer. This combination was to expensive. Now on the same machine running Passenger we have in average 6 spawners vs. 2 mongrel\_cluster with 2 servers each. just my 2 cents Fritzek [poppster.com](http://poppster.com) ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2008, 5:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/6 "2008-09-21T17:41:11Z")
I run a server at work that uses mod\_rails quite successfully. It was really easy to get started, and seems to be doing great. Something particularly attractive about mod\_rails was that we could easily host any Sinatra app (we have a few of those running) and Merb apps too. James H. On Sep 15, 10:11 pm, “Vince W.” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2008, 10:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/7 "2008-09-29T22:51:52Z")
I have tested the same application on the same VPS with mod\_rails and mongrel behind nginx. It is more easy to set mod\_rails and you should use it for fast deployment. The spawn process was the killer. The second thing that wasn’t running was javascript\_include\_tag with :cache=\>true. Mongrel and nginx was not so difficult to set up, we already do this so many times, and the performance was extraordinary as usual. mod\_rails will be the right choice soon but, still waiting. ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 12:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/8 "2008-09-30T00:23:19Z")
On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 10:51 PM, dima [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > The second thing that wasn’t running was javascript\_include\_tag > with :cache=\>true. What do you mean? ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 1:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/9 "2008-09-30T01:15:24Z")
Just a followup to my earlier comments regarding the instabilities in mod\_rails. Having gotten a few systems up and running with an updated version of Ruby (one of which is running Ruby Enterprise), we’re seeing much better results overall. (e.g. No more out of control passenger processes, etc) Using a recent build of Ruby along with mod\_rails is definitely a viable solution for folks who prefer to use Apache. We’re still not seeing any substantial performance differences to say that you _should_ use mod\_rails instead of nginx+mongrel, but you _can_. 🙂 If you’re more comfortable with Apache, or if you’d like to run a PHP site on the same machine, using mod\_rails is definitely a good a choice at this point. ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 9:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/10 "2008-09-30T09:06:02Z")
Here is some description of situation that I was in. The rails app is not mine and I had just to deploy it for the proof of concept demonstration. The mod\_rails was my natural choice. The folder privileges are set as they should be. Since that is on a VPS I have noticed the long first hit response time due the spawn process. That was expected but it was a bit to long for me. Then I noticed that there is no mod\_deflate and I include it too and it was a bit better but cold start up was still to long. Than I noticed that javascript\_include\_tag can be changed by adding the :chache=\>true directive since it was in production environment. At first it helps and app becomes more responsive. Then the second time I have start the whole system again at first I have got a 503 and on a second request everything is working OK. This was repeatable on every first spawn hit. For some reason I try to check to see what the all.js is looking and noticed a strange message from a firebug that this file is missing. Then I requested just the all.js from the browser and the same result – 404. Even to my biggest surprise no message in production log or apache logs except ones for 404. Since I was on a tight schedule the solution was: go with the known. Just fire up a mongrel, witch was not present at the time of previous test, and width plain vanilla setup. Everything was working right of the box, the all.js was present and response time on first hit was as expected. I will try to make the same situation again ASAP to be able to go little deeper in. If I find some new light on the case I’ll post it. The mod\_rails is a good solution for fast deployment and it’s much easer to educate people to use it. ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 12:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/11 "2008-10-06T12:08:37Z")
Alex Malinovich wrote: > Just a followup to my earlier comments regarding the instabilities in > mod\_rails. Having gotten a few systems up and running with an updated > version of Ruby (one of which is running Ruby Enterprise), we’re > seeing much better results overall. (e.g. No more out of control > passenger processes, etc) > > Using a recent build of Ruby along with mod\_rails is definitely a > viable solution for folks who prefer to use Apache. We’re still not > seeing any substantial performance differences to say that you > _should_ use mod\_rails instead of nginx+mongrel, but you _can_. 🙂 If > you’re more comfortable with Apache, or if you’d like to run a PHP > site on the same machine, using mod\_rails is definitely a good a > choice at this point. Interesting. We’ve seen a number of people claiming that Phusion Passenger doesn’t work very well (= crashing every few hours, processes that get stuck, etc) even though we can’t reproduce their problems at all. We haven’t considered the possibility that their Ruby interpreter might be the problem. Which Ruby version were you running before, and which version did you upgrade to? ---
**Author:** ![vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vince](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vince)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2008, 12:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-nginx-vs-mod-rails/148675/12 "2008-10-07T00:07:12Z")
Most of the problems happened with 1.8.6p114, and most of them were resolved with either 1.8.6p287 or Enterprise Ruby. On Oct 6, 3:08 am, Hongli L. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)