# RoR on Windows 2000/2003.. Is there any problem? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [November 27, 2006, 2:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-on-windows-2000-2003-is-there-any-problem/77381 "2006-11-27T14:12:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/df788c/32.png) [@pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pix)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 2:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-on-windows-2000-2003-is-there-any-problem/77381/1 "2006-11-27T14:12:59Z")
Hello, I’m currently wirking in my first commercial project with RoR. The client is asking me if we can use Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000, because he has 3 application running on 3 virtual private servers running Windows, and he thinks that the most efficient way to go for this new application in RoR would be to create a new virtual private server in that big computer. I’m currently developing applications with RoR in Win XP, using the last version of InstantRails, and everything seems to work fine, so I told him that I was going to investigate, and give him an advice. Now, I did just that, and I found in this group some posts discusing this issue. The conclusion is that you can run RoR on Windows, but everyone still prefer to run it on Linux. Then, my question is… why? Is it really better to run RoR in Linux/Apache/Mongrel than Windows/Apache/Mongrel (for example)? Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks! Federico F. ---
**Author:** ![pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/df788c/32.png) [@pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pix)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 2:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-on-windows-2000-2003-is-there-any-problem/77381/2 "2006-11-27T14:29:33Z")
Linux is faster. I’ve got lots of posts outlining how we run Windows servers for production rails apps…search the list for ‘bphogan’. I’ve also written some articles on how to do deployment on Windows servers. You’ll need multiple dispatchers for a Rails application because of the single-threaded nature of the Rails framework. The Ruby interpreter is really slow on Windows, so you’ll probably need more dispatchers to handle the load. For example… in my tests with my server (2x2ghz 2gb ram), I see roughly 6 to 10 requests per second (60-80k requests per 24 hour period). That same hardware gives me roughly 30 to 50 requests per second. So Windows works fine for low-traffic things, but won’t scale well for high-traffic sites. You can use Mongrel instances and load-balance using Apache 2.2 with mod\_proxy\_balance if you need to scale, but you’ll need a lot more instances of mongrel to process the requests. You can get by with only 2 to 4 on Linux 🙂 If you are _forced_ to deploy on Windows, then you have to do it. If you have a choice, I’d go with Ubuntu because that’s super easy to set up and if you’re virtualizing your servers it’s a piece of cake. I’m currently proxying requests from a Windows web server to Apache running on Linux, all virtualized. Feel free to contact me off list if you have more questions. I’d be happy to help. ---
**Author:** ![pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/df788c/32.png) [@pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pix)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2006, 8:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-on-windows-2000-2003-is-there-any-problem/77381/3 "2006-11-28T20:18:17Z")
Also, remember to think not only about development but about deployment, monitoring and maintenance. It will be difficult or impossible for you to make use of Capistrano (was SwitchTower) when your deployment target is windows: “I agree that people need to deploy to Windows, but if they do, ST is not the tool for them. I will not be adding Windows support to ST. ST’s dependency on things like SSH and POSIX scripts is too deep, and changing that would require a fundamental shift in the way ST does it’s stuff.” - Jamis B., [http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2005/12/23/switchtower-wishlist](http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2005/12/23/switchtower-wishlist) While a few people report at least partial success with with Capistrano on cygwin, a quick google failed to find any concrete write-ups of this. I would want to take advantage of the experience and tools of the large majority of the RoR community which deploys to a 'nix environment. Whatever you need to do on that platform with RoR, there’s increased likelihood that someone has done it before; community support is more probable, documentation more plentiful, and bug fixes appear more quickly. Good luck! ---
**Author:** ![pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/df788c/32.png) [@pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pix)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2006, 8:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-on-windows-2000-2003-is-there-any-problem/77381/4 "2006-11-28T20:30:22Z")
Yeah. I specialize in solutions that integrate virtual linux servers inside of Windows networks just for this reason. Deployment is so much easier if you can use a linux machine and hide it behind your Windows web server. ---
**Author:** ![pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/df788c/32.png) [@pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pix)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 4:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-on-windows-2000-2003-is-there-any-problem/77381/5 "2006-12-02T16:06:09Z")
Thank you all!! I understand now the difference. We are going to have one Windows 2003 server with 5 virtual servers. One of them will be for RoR production in Linux. This idea came from a person in my team that has experience with virtual Linux server inside a Windows Server (but not using RoR). It seems like Brian has experience in that too for RoR and it’s a good alternative. So why is some people using Windows if they can make a linux vps inside it? ---
**Author:** ![pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/df788c/32.png) [@pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pix)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 4:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-on-windows-2000-2003-is-there-any-problem/77381/6 "2006-12-02T16:07:27Z")
Thank you all!! I understand now the difference. We are going to have one Windows 2003 server with 5 virtual servers. One of them will be for RoR production in Linux. This idea came from a person in my team that has experience with virtual Linux server inside a Windows Server (but not using RoR). It seems like Brian has experience in that too for RoR and it’s a good alternative. So why is some people using Windows if they can make a linux vps inside it? ---
**Author:** ![pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/df788c/32.png) [@pix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pix)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 5:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ror-on-windows-2000-2003-is-there-any-problem/77381/7 "2006-12-02T17:51:40Z")
Some people just can’t convince their server team to do Linux on VMWare due to their lack of understanding about either VMWare or Linux. You’re not going to allow a production system that runs on a platform you don’t know anything about because when something goes wrong you have to know how to fix it. That’s what I’ve encountered.