# Ruby on Rails site with 10 million users? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [April 10, 2007, 11:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-on-rails-site-with-10-million-users/91625 "2007-04-10T23:10:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**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:** [April 10, 2007, 11:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-on-rails-site-with-10-million-users/91625/1 "2007-04-10T23:10:22Z")
How big could a Ruby on Rails site scale interests me. Take 37signals who have just over 1 million users. Amazing products but not mass market like myspace or youtube… If someone released a site that got huge traffic and users, how big could it go? 5 million users, 10 million, 20 million? ---
**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:** [April 10, 2007, 11:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-on-rails-site-with-10-million-users/91625/2 "2007-04-10T23:20:23Z")
On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 09:08:39PM -0000, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > How big could a Ruby on Rails site scale interests me. > Take 37signals who have just over 1 million users. Amazing products > but not mass market like myspace or youtube… > If someone released a site that got huge traffic and users, how big > could it go? > 5 million users, 10 million, 20 million? Keep watching [www.revolutionhealth.com](http://www.revolutionhealth.com) since that’s where it’s aiming to go. Beyond seeing the success or failure of such a huge site, how would you know? –Greg ---
**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:** [April 10, 2007, 11:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-on-rails-site-with-10-million-users/91625/3 "2007-04-10T23:23:23Z")
Most people will ignore this question, but I’ll answer it… Don’t measure in users, measure in hits. How many hits do you expect to get in a day? A user does not just come to your site once… they do a lot of things while they are there. Adding AJAX can really raise that number. Rails, like PHP, Java, .Net, etc can scale just fine. You just need to know how. ---
**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:** [April 10, 2007, 11:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-on-rails-site-with-10-million-users/91625/4 "2007-04-10T23:26:23Z")
I’ve seen [www.revolutionhealth.com](http://www.revolutionhealth.com) on Techcrunch. A really nice site. I didn’t quite understand “Beyond seeing the success or failure of such a huge site, how would you know?” DT. ---
**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:** [April 10, 2007, 11:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-on-rails-site-with-10-million-users/91625/5 "2007-04-10T23:38:24Z")
On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 09:24:57PM -0000, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > I’ve seen [www.revolutionhealth.com](http://www.revolutionhealth.com) on Techcrunch. > A really nice site. > I didn’t quite understand “Beyond seeing the success or failure of > such a huge site, how would you know?” We can talk about shared nothing, about scaling up and scaling out, about strategies for scaling, about data centers and server farms, but there’s nothing like an actual, real-world site standing up to load or failing to do so to give you an idea of whether some technology can scale. If it stands up, the technology scaled. If it doesn’t, the people responsible for making it scaled didn’t succeed and the reason they failed may or may not be something inherent in the technology itself. Basically, the strategies exist, it can be attempted, and there is reason to believe that it can succeed. Beyond that… did eBay or Amazon know they’d be able to stand up to the load a priori, or did they just put it out there and optimize when they started having problems? I don’t know, but I doubt that Jeff Bezos would have said in 1994 that he was sure he could build a site that scaled to what Amazon deals with today. > DT. > –Greg ---
**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:** [April 10, 2007, 11:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-on-rails-site-with-10-million-users/91625/6 "2007-04-10T23:52:25Z")
Install RoR on every internet connected computer in the world, with as many mogrels as each computer, can handle using all the web servers in the world connected thought the greatest clustering software in the world, backed by every supported database running in the world to store your data. That’s how far RoR will scale. Now how far can you “afford” to scale? Being sarcastic to some degree in case you didn’t catch on to that… Point being “Try it and see. And optimize as you go along.” On Apr 10, 5:36 pm, Gregory S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)