mongrel cluster

Question

If I have a single application but have many users using it at the same time (lets say 30) not running with apache, will mongrel cluster help with performance? What exactly is a mongrel cluster?

I notice that you can have load balancing (mongrel cluster) with apache. I just want to know if this will help with performance/worth the time to implement?

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EDIT: So what exactly does it mean when you have three instances of mongrel running when you have mongrel cluster setup? Does this mean that a user can access all three instances, test:8000, test:8001...etc

If so, how does this help with performance???

Thanks

Answer 1

A single mongrel instance can only handle one request at a time. If two users access it concurrently, one request will have to wait until the other one completes. Also, if you are not behind a server such as Apache, Nginix, Lighttpd, etc., you will be serving all of your images/stylesheets/etc. directly from Mongrel, one at a time.

The best bet would be to use mongrel_cluster behind some kind of a load balancer, with a real webserver at the very front. Webserver serves asset requests, forwards application requests to the proxy balancer which sends them to a mongrel in your cluster.

OR, you could just look into Passenger, which integrates all this into Apache/Nginix really easily.

Answer 2

I think you couldn't use mongrel cluster without a balancer. in a cluster you run many mongrel listen on different port , you need a proxy to incalanate the request/response of your client .

i suggest you to look at passenger+apache very simple to configure for high performance.

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