# Mongrel vs fastCGI+lighty

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-vs-fastcgi-lighty/79546>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 16, 2006, 6:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-vs-fastcgi-lighty/79546 "2006-12-16T06:27:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2006, 6:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-vs-fastcgi-lighty/79546/1 "2006-12-16T06:27:15Z")

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hiya -

we are building a pure ruby app (not rails) and wondered what people’s  
comments are on different ways to deploy this.

I’ve heard mongrel categorized as a kind of better webbrick, ie just a  
nicer dev time quick’n’dirty webserver. is it usable for a  
high-performance production environment?

in terms of lighty/fastCGI, this seems to be working well for us; at  
least a lot better than apache w/ fcgi. it also gives us a basic  
webserver for files etc. we did have to spend some time getting a  
framework running for this tho.

so i was wondering if there is any advantage to using mongrel for  
non-Rails apps?  
esp if we dont really care about running on windows.

any insight appreciate to compare apples with oranges.

tx,

## /dc

```
  David "DC" Collier

```

[mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
+81 (0)80 6521 9559  
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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2006, 10:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mongrel-vs-fastcgi-lighty/79546/2 "2006-12-16T10:57:27Z")

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On Sat, 16 Dec 2006, dc wrote:

> non-Rails apps?  
> esp if we dont really care about running on windows.

Mongrel is nice. It is easy to use, and quite fast.

All of my web site and apps are non-rails apps (IOWA framework), and my  
preferred deployment solution right now for most of them is to either  
use  
Mongrel, or to use a hybrid solution that employs the Mongrel http  
parser  
on top of EventMachine.

Where individual requests are reliably handled quickly, the hybrid  
approach is the fastest, especially on a heavily loaded site/app where  
there may be moderate to high numbers of concurrent requests, they  
hybrid  
approach that I use has worked very well, and this is, most often, the  
mode I choose to run sites and apps in.

Where there may be some requests which are slow to handle, it’s  
sometimes  
better for me to run the site using Mongrel.

In general, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Mongrel as a base http  
handling platform for a Ruby web app.

Kirk H.