Ruby in Practice

Appendix C. Deploying web apps

In chapter 8, we looked at tools to deploy Ruby (both web and off-the-web) applications. Here, we’ll look at specifics and the architecture for deploying web applications. There is certainly no shortage of options. So which deployment method is right for you?

We’ll start by briefly reviewing the available options, then narrow it down to one particular architecture that works best across the board, from local use during development to deploying for production on a server farm. We’ll show you how to deploy for this architecture using Apache 2 and Nginx as frontend web servers and Thin and Mongrel as backend application servers.

C.1. An overview of deployment options

The original model for deploying applications behind ...