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The single best advice I can give for scaling Rails, and it is applicable to nearly every other framework: give it more memory. Generally, when you run into a b

by rudiger 16y ago

The single best advice I can give for scaling Rails, and it is applicable to nearly every other framework: give it more memory. Generally, when you run into a bottleneck in Rails, you're running out of RAM first. You can get a couple of 8GB sticks for around $500; just over-provision your server and worry about the problem later.

stuff4ben 16y ago
Sorry, but that's terrible advice, especially for bootstrapped businesses. Throwing resources at a problem will only scale as large as your wallet is. It's both wasteful and lazy.
- patio11 16y ago
  Throwing money at problems is sometimes the right answer, and I say that as someone who is so bootstrapped I can occasionally taste the shoe leather. Heck, I spend ~$500 a month on hosting when I could probably do it in half that on renting a dedicated server (or just buy a big beefy box and pay a pittance for a spot on a rack somewhere). I don't because it isn't worth my time to even think about migrating. My favorite anecdote: asking tptacek to help me me squeeze a few megs out of Redis to avoid having to bump my VPS up a tier. That would have been, heck if I know, $BOATLOADS / hr in engineer costs to avoid $30 per month on my Slicehost bill. He restored me to sanity fairly quickly.
  - tastybites 16y ago
    I hear people whine about their VPS hosting costs at the same time as enjoying $100 of booze and cheese at the bar.
- donw 16y ago
  But that's what you're doing, whether you choose to add hardware or improve the code -- it's not like your time as a business owner is free, and every moment you're spending on the codebase is a moment you're not marketing or selling. The real question is which is more valuable to your business. Consider these two examples: Let's say I'm a bootstrapper, and have a startup that earns $3k monthly. My customers are happy, and my business is growing, but I'm having some serious scaling problems. Scenario One: I've outgrown the small Linode that I started on. If doubling the cost of my Linode allows me to service 2X the number of customers, I do it, because $3k in revenue is way higher than the cost. Scenario Two: I've maxed out the biggest Linode, and the next step up is a cluster of dedicated nodes at Rackspace for $4k/month, which will allow me to scale to 2X my current volume. At this point, I fix the code, because my earnings will drop even if I get twice the number of customers.

by rudiger 16y ago

stuff4ben 16y ago

Sorry, but that's terrible advice, especially for bootstrapped businesses. Throwing resources at a problem will only scale as large as your wallet is. It's both wasteful and lazy.

patio11 16y ago
Throwing money at problems is sometimes the right answer, and I say that as someone who is so bootstrapped I can occasionally taste the shoe leather. Heck, I spend ~$500 a month on hosting when I could probably do it in half that on renting a dedicated server (or just buy a big beefy box and pay a pittance for a spot on a rack somewhere). I don't because it isn't worth my time to even think about migrating. My favorite anecdote: asking tptacek to help me me squeeze a few megs out of Redis to avoid having to bump my VPS up a tier. That would have been, heck if I know, $BOATLOADS / hr in engineer costs to avoid $30 per month on my Slicehost bill. He restored me to sanity fairly quickly.
- tastybites 16y ago
  I hear people whine about their VPS hosting costs at the same time as enjoying $100 of booze and cheese at the bar.
donw 16y ago
But that's what you're doing, whether you choose to add hardware or improve the code -- it's not like your time as a business owner is free, and every moment you're spending on the codebase is a moment you're not marketing or selling. The real question is which is more valuable to your business. Consider these two examples: Let's say I'm a bootstrapper, and have a startup that earns $3k monthly. My customers are happy, and my business is growing, but I'm having some serious scaling problems. Scenario One: I've outgrown the small Linode that I started on. If doubling the cost of my Linode allows me to service 2X the number of customers, I do it, because $3k in revenue is way higher than the cost. Scenario Two: I've maxed out the biggest Linode, and the next step up is a cluster of dedicated nodes at Rackspace for $4k/month, which will allow me to scale to 2X my current volume. At this point, I fix the code, because my earnings will drop even if I get twice the number of customers.