Recommended server layout/architecture for Rails application

Question

What is the recommended server layout for a production Rails application that is expected to receive medium (not heavy, but not light either) traffic? I'm thinking of a setup running Apache and Passenger (mod_rails). How many application servers, web servers, and database servers make sense? How should they be set up to provide redundancy, failover, reliability, etc.?

I know this is a broad question that depends on a lot of factors, but I'm just looking for general advice and suggestions for how this should be approached.

Answer 1

Passenger and Apache or Nginx are great starting points.

The rest basically depends on your budget and requirements and are essentially impossible to give a canned response on.

A single server is a good place to start, and you will probably be surprised by the volume of traffic a single decently spec'd box with the right tuning can turn over.

If you have budget for two servers, a splitting the web server and database is the next logical step.

Answer 2

I highly recommend going with Heroku. Let it host the app for you and turn up the dial when you need more workers.