Why the multiple web servers?

Rails
1

I’m trying to understand how the multiple web servers interact w/one
another in a rails deployment. If I’ve got thin or mongrel or what
have you serving my app, what’s apache doing for me? What can I read
to clear this up for me?

Thanks!

-Roy

2

Ah–okay then. Thanks!

3

On Wed, 2008-04-23 at 20:31 -0700, Roy P. wrote:

I’m trying to understand how the multiple web servers interact w/one
another in a rails deployment. If I’ve got thin or mongrel or what
have you serving my app, what’s apache doing for me? What can I read
to clear this up for me?

typically rails is a single threaded process.

You can have multiple ‘mongrels’ to serve more than 1 thread at the same
time in case one thread is tied up.

Apache then is used as a proxy to the available mongrels, plus apache
can/will cache fixed assets (javascripts/stylesheets) and generally make
things fast.

Lastly, you tend to run rails in user space and users don’t/shouldn’t
have access to port 80 (http) and thus the proxy gets the stuff from
high numbered user space tcp ports.

Craig