# Scalable file uploads with Rails **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [February 7, 2009, 2:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/scalable-file-uploads-with-rails/159682 "2009-02-07T02:11:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mr\_tibs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/439d5e/32.png) [@mr\_tibs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mr_tibs)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 2:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/scalable-file-uploads-with-rails/159682/1 "2009-02-07T02:11:37Z")
Hi, I’m involved in a project where I have to re-architect file uploads in a Rails application to make it scalable. Users will be uploading large XML files (approx. 1MB) with high probability of overlap (upload at the same time) - which we try to minimize. The current system runs Mongrel cluster (3 Mongrels) and Apache mod proxy balancer. The file upload is done using attachment\_fu. What choices do I have? 1. Throw more Mongrel processes in the Mongrel cluster. We are already have other applications running Mongrel clusters on the same machine, so this option is limited. 2. Use BackgrounDRb. I looked a bit into BackgroundDRb, but I’m not sure it can help. Even if a middleman passes the upload task to a worker process, would that work? First of all, can you even pass the upload task? How would you do it? Would that completely free up the Mongrel process? Would I have to scale the BackroundDRb process, or is there scalability built in? I couldn’t find an example on the web that does just that. 3. Use Merb. I’m still trying to get my head around it. I found 2 examples that show how to do file uploads with Merb, but they are kinda old, and Merb went through a lot of changes in the last year. Even if I could get one upload example working, how do I deal with scalability? Would I start a bunch of these Merb processes and use a proxy balancer to distribute the file uploads? From what I’m reading, these would take much less memory than having Mongrel processes running Rails, so I guess that would help me. I don’t think I’ve seen any examples on the web that do it. 4. Write my own cgi c/c++ upload functionality. This will get nasty because files are transmitted with multipart where each packet has a header, etc. If I could get this to work, then I leave the upload functionality to Apache (which I guess would do a good job about scaling the uploads and it will be fast too) and I’ll run some Ruby cron jobs which parse the files on the web server. I appreciate feedback to any of these choices. Thanks, Tiberiu ---
**Author:** ![mr\_tibs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/439d5e/32.png) [@mr\_tibs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mr_tibs)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2009, 5:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/scalable-file-uploads-with-rails/159682/2 "2009-02-08T05:19:44Z")
if you are up to it, you can also use JRuby. JRuby uses native threads so you should get good non-blocking performance without having to configure any “runtimes”. I use it and get great performance. Adam ---
**Author:** ![mr\_tibs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/439d5e/32.png) [@mr\_tibs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mr_tibs)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2009, 7:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/scalable-file-uploads-with-rails/159682/3 "2009-02-08T07:02:38Z")
> We started using the nginx upload module about a month ago and it works > great. Whatever you do you don’t want rails in the file upload loop on a > busy site. You can easily starve out other requests and put your servers > into a death spiral. > [http://www.grid.net.ru/nginx/upload.en.html](http://www.grid.net.ru/nginx/upload.en.html). Chris