Is the LiteSpeed Ruby LSAPI my best choice?

[travisbell]

Hey guys,

I've been using the LiteSpeed Ruby LSAPI and it works very well. Here's my question though, in another Apache environment I am really enjoying Mongrel and was wondering, with LiteSpeed, has anyone ever done any performance testing with different servers like Mongrel?

This just an open ended question really...

[mistwang]

Want to know what other peoples think about LiteSpeed? check links below.

http://www.digg.com/software/LiteSpe..._Ruby_on_Rails
http://www.benmyles.com/2007/2/6/fou...love-litespeed
http://www.monkeytreats.com/2007/3/1...peed-kicks-ass
http://blog.viget.com/tech/2006/11/2...-to-litespeed/
http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.js...&thread=174959

Even Zed Shaw, the author of Mongrel has recommended LiteSpeed occiationally.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp....espeed+mongrel

[travisbell]

Cool. Thanks.

I am curious. In regards to scalibilty and RoR, would it better to use LiteSpeeds built in load balancing OR something like Capistrano (or even Mongrel for that matter)?

I've been using LiteSpeed for over 2 months and do love it, don't mistake my questions here as anything but love.

Cheers,

[mistwang]

It is the best choice to use LiteSpeed + Ruby LSAPI, no need of load balancing if it is only one server setup.
Mongrel will require mongrel_cluster + load balancing capable web server in production, LiteSpeed is one of those, however it is not recommended due to configuration complexities and lower performance.

[travisbell]

Originally Posted by mistwang

It is the best choice to use LiteSpeed + Ruby LSAPI, no need of load balancing if it is only one server setup.

Right but what I am wondering is as my app grows and I DO need to scale it, is my best route LiteSpeed balancing? Or somethig like Capistrano? I have no problem paying for a good product.

Ie. scale just Rails, or is it wiser to scale the LiteSpeed environment? In this example lets assume all I have running on these systems is LiteSpeed. No mail, no DB...

[mistwang]

In a load balancing environment, we still recommend using LiteSpeed + LSAPI on each cluster node, should be faster than running Mongrels.
Capistrano does not do the load balancing directly, it manages all Mongrel instances in a cluster. It can be used to manage a LiteSpeed cluster as well.

Please take a look at:
http://www.litespeedtech.com/support...iki:capistrano

For load balancing, our load balancer product will be released in a few days.

[travisbell]

Awesome!

Thanks for the clarification.

[dirkbj]

Originally Posted by mistwang

For load balancing, our load balancer product will be released in a few days.

I'd love to hear more about this.

Dirk

[mistwang]

It is a layer7 content aware, session aware load balancer, which support HTTP, LSAPI, FCGI and AJP backends. It can direct request to different backend based on domain names, URL, Session, etc. It supports URL rewrite and request filtering.
Load balancing algorithms are: round-robin, least load, least session on top of either stateful or stateless load balancing.

Actaully, it has been used by a few large sites pumping out hundreds of requsts per second, even before its official launch.

[dirkbj]

Any release date?

I'd like to try it on a Rails deployment.

Dirk