# Ultramonkey vs pound? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 10, 2007, 8:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultramonkey-vs-pound/81584 "2007-01-10T08:50:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f475e1/32.png) [@nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nappin)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 8:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultramonkey-vs-pound/81584/1 "2007-01-10T08:50:15Z")
I know most people use pound, but has anyone tried using ultramonkey as a load balancing solution between a cluster of mongrels and lighttpd? Thanks, Ray ---
**Author:** ![nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f475e1/32.png) [@nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nappin)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 10:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultramonkey-vs-pound/81584/2 "2007-01-10T10:21:03Z")
I would _highly_ recommend checking out nginx. It’s even lighter and faster than lighty, _and_ has a good balancer built in. – – Tom M., CTO – Engine Y., Ruby on Rails Hosting – Reliability, Ease of Use, Scalability – (866) 518-YARD (9273) ---
**Author:** ![nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f475e1/32.png) [@nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nappin)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 12:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultramonkey-vs-pound/81584/3 "2007-01-10T12:27:28Z")
On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:50:15 +0100 Raymond O’connor [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I know most people use pound, but has anyone tried using ultramonkey as > a load balancing solution between a cluster of mongrels and lighttpd? > Thanks, > Ray There is also pen, [Pen](http://siag.nu/pen) Dominic ---
**Author:** ![nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f475e1/32.png) [@nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nappin)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 3:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultramonkey-vs-pound/81584/4 "2007-01-10T15:47:05Z")
Is there any benefit to using one of these load balancers over just using lighttpd’s mod\_proxy to distribute load to Mongrel processes? ---
**Author:** ![nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f475e1/32.png) [@nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nappin)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 5:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultramonkey-vs-pound/81584/5 "2007-01-10T17:55:15Z")
For our setup, the plan was to have the load balancing sw on two seperate boxes (one being a failover) that will loadbalance among several lighty/mongrel boxes. That leads to my next question, does nginx’s load balancing have any failover/monitoring so the other load balancer can take over? Under my limited knowledge, it seems nginx’s load balancing is part of the webserver itself, not something I can easily pull out of the webserver part and stick on its own server. My boss seems to like ultra monkey for whatever reason, but I couldn’t find one mention about anyone using it with an RoR setup, so I think we may go with pound or pen instead. Versus pound/pen is one better at doing failover/monitoring than the other? Thanks again, Ray ---
**Author:** ![nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f475e1/32.png) [@nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nappin)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 5:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultramonkey-vs-pound/81584/6 "2007-01-10T17:36:48Z")
Dominic M. wrote: > There is also pen, [Pen](http://siag.nu/pen) pen absolutely rocks from a performance and reliability perspective. Takes a bit of work to set up properly though, especially if you want unified access logs with original client IP preserved. ---
**Author:** ![nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f475e1/32.png) [@nappin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nappin)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2007, 6:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ultramonkey-vs-pound/81584/7 "2007-01-10T18:22:57Z")
On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:35:08 -0000 “Sheldon Hearn” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Dominic M. wrote: > > > There is also pen, [Pen](http://siag.nu/pen) > > pen absolutely rocks from a performance and reliability perspective. I found it would crash under certain circumstances. In my case loading a page with several hundreds images linked into it. Of course, having such a page is not such a great idea anyway! > Takes a bit of work to set up properly though, especially if you want > unified access logs with original client IP preserved. I patched it to insert an additional HTTP header with the client IP in the forwarding request as a work around. I was logging the client IP at the application level rather than server log though. If anyone wants the patch E-Mail me and I’ll see if I can find it. Dominic