# Which server should our Rails website use?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-server-should-our-rails-website-use/134783>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 15, 2008, 1:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-server-should-our-rails-website-use/134783 "2008-04-15T01:21:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![AtsoK](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/db5fbb/32.png) [@AtsoK](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/AtsoK)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 1:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-server-should-our-rails-website-use/134783/1 "2008-04-15T01:21:00Z")

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Hello all,

My team and I plan on releasing our Rails startup soon, but we’re not  
sure which server to use. Nginx? Litespeed? Apache? We’re going to use  
SliceHost (a 512MB slice) if that helps.

I’ve played around with Litespeed, and it’s nice not having to deal  
with any mongrel clusters, etc. Apache is what I use on my personal  
computer, so I feel comfortable and have the most experience with  
that. And with the release of mod\_rails, it’s _really_ tempting to use  
Apache. (Never used nginx before.)

So, what do you guys think would be the best one to handle massive  
load (e.g.: the “digg effect”) (probably wishful thinking, but it’s  
better to be safe than sorry) when dealing with 512MB. Or should we go  
for the 1024MB slice?

Thanks everyone!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AtsoK](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/db5fbb/32.png) [@AtsoK](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/AtsoK)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 2:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-server-should-our-rails-website-use/134783/2 "2008-04-15T02:14:34Z")

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I think the conventional wisdom is to purchase the server you need now,  
and worry about scaling when you really need it. From what I hear,  
Slicehost makes it easy to upgrade. All the servers you mentioned are  
really fast at serving static pages, so I think any one of them would  
probably be fine. Pick what’s easiest to configure and deploy for you  
needs.

If you really plan on getting Dugg, I would say that your Rails app is  
going to be a more likely bottleneck than your webserver. Making sure  
you’re caching your site properly, and have it tweaked for performance.  
If you expect a sudden influx of traffic, it might be a good idea to  
contact your host, and let them know, so they can work with you on  
handling it properly.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AtsoK](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/db5fbb/32.png) [@AtsoK](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/AtsoK)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 4:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-server-should-our-rails-website-use/134783/3 "2008-04-15T04:04:48Z")

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Personally, I would stick with the 512mb slice for now and go with  
Apache + mod\_rails OR nginx + thin cluster. You really can’t go wrong  
either way.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AtsoK](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/db5fbb/32.png) [@AtsoK](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/AtsoK)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 2:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-server-should-our-rails-website-use/134783/4 "2008-04-15T14:04:47Z")

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We’ve been using 256MB slice with LiteSpeed for an “incubator” site  
and been pretty pleased with the results so far. The thing that LS  
has in its favor is that it can spin up/down instances as you need  
them (rather than statically creating them with the more memory  
intensive mongrel/clusters).