From: Lothar Scholz <mailinglists@...>
Date: 2005-03-19T08:55:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Free Rails hosting?

Hello Eric,

I think you didn't understand the intention of my posting.

EH> 43 Things averages 46661 KB/Rails process (we peak at 200,000
EH> pageviews/day running 40 processes FastCGI across 2 servers). Most of
EH> the time load hovers around 0.10 to 0.20 (we have dual 3GHz Xeons with
EH> 2GB RAM), but peaks at about 0.50.

.....

EH> People have just managed to fit Rails into 64MB virtual servers.  I
EH> doubt you could do the same with a Java app.

This is about factor 50-100 to high to provide a free hosting
environment. You can without problems put 1000 PHP Users on one
machine. Many free hosters have even more then this.

>> It absolutely makes no sense for any hoster to offer something like
>> this.

EH> I disagree and feel that this is a statement that carries a great deal
EH> of ignorance.

EH> I believe people have gotten Rails to fit in a 64MB virtual server with
EH> a shoehorn.  There's been some discussion of this on the Rails mailing
EH> list.  It would make perfect sense for a host to offer free 64MB 
EH> virtual servers because the sandbox is much easier to manage.

If somebody offers a free hosting the management should be around 0.

>> It is also difficult to setup because you need a FCGI.

EH> Installing involves about 4 lines added to the httpd.conf and
EH> installing 3 packages.  FastCGI is common enough that packages 
EH> (FreeBSD's ports tree, in my case) are very readily available.

Thats to much if you don't get money. You also have to setup some
scripts on a machine and observe more processes. How does FCGI perform
when there are 200 or more different FCGI servers ? If you offer it
for free you must put a lot of persons on the machine, because it
costs money for the hardware, power, security (data center)...

It makes sense to offer rails support without doubt, much more sense
then java server page support. But not for free. For free you will only
get static webspace or php / simplest cgi support. They are the
only way to put the cost low enough to cross finance the service with
advertising or by hope that a few users will upgrade to non-free
packages.

Maybe some education institutions will offer it for free (since they can
get the money in other ways) and so this was my recommended advise to the
original poster: ask his school/university.

I hope you understand that i'm not speaking against rails, but about
the financal problems of web hosters.


-- 
 Best regards,                        emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
 Lothar Scholz                        http://www.ruby-ide.com
 CTO Scriptolutions                   Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's