Ask HN: What is the easiest way to host a Rails app? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the easiest way to host a Rails app?

10 pointsdanramteke21 comments

Maybe I'm typing the wrong things into Google, but the easy way to host a Rails app is eluding me. I know how to set up capistrano, thin, nginx, Ubuntu, mysql, etc, but where can I find this set up out of the box? It's gotta be out there.

Suggestions? Thanks!

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http://blog.fiveruns.com/2008/10/20/automatic-production-rai... -- it's a no-fuss script for bringing up production Rails on slicehost.

this looks useful, thanks for the link.

This article gives a decent overview: http://www.aidanf.net/deploying-rails-on-a-clean-ubuntu-slic...

Aside from that, you can search for tutorials related to blank slate hosts like Slicehost and Linode - they tend to cover rails well.

Slicehost.com does have some nice tutorials for just getting started. Is there a turnkey solution out there?

Are you looking for something low-cost or more of a high-end managed service?

MediaTemple has RoR grid containers and other hosts support Rails now, but I don't know of a turnkey solution ... although Heroku looks interesting.

Seriously, if you get a slicehost slice w/ Ubuntu Hardy, Apache and mod_rails, you can get your app up in < 3 hours.

Plus, there's something to be said for getting on the server and learning how to do some things yourself.

Looking for something with a low barrier to entry, but with room to grow. Something not unlike AWS, but totally tuned for Rails. I'm thinking about building such a solution if nothing else works out. For my personal use if nothing else.

Perhaps there is an AWS machine image tuned for Rails?

Bingo: http://ec2onrails.rubyforge.org/

sweet deal!

Something to consider (not quite turnkey depending on how you look at it) is deprec. Quite a few people still swear by it:

http://www.deprec.org/

have you tried heroku.com?

just signed up for an invite. Thanks!

Heroku is great.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the main drawbacks at this point are that your app can't send email, and you can't do cron stuff.

The free service is great, and I'll have my wallet out when they offer premium with those types of features.

You can send email from a 'blessed' app (just ask them and it's likely they'll give you their blessing). I'm not sure about background jobs, but I imagine it's in the works.

I've had good luck with hosting Rails on Dreamhost. They have a good wiki page on how to set it up with capistrano (http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Capistrano) and you get shell access.

I'm not sure if this fits your needs, but I would also take a look at WebFaction. http://www.webfaction.com/hosting/rails-hosting

setting up mod_rails on slicehost is pretty straightforward

Rails Machine(http://railsmachine.com) makes setting up and deploying rails apps very easy with their capistrano tasks(https://support.railsmachine.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id...). I've been with them for over a year and I highly recommend them.

You see rails apps saying 'hosted by engine yard' on gitnub.

Try this list: http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RailsWebHosts

and 'rails hosting' on google.

Some slicehost articles that might be useful to you:

Setting up a Ubuntu Hardy Heron with Rails: http://articles.slicehost.com/ubuntu-hardy

Try searching for Rails EC2 AMI if you're interested in hosting on EC2: http://pauldowman.com/projects/ruby-on-rails-ec2/

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