Memcached with nginx on rails

As promised in my last article i m posting the way to configure memcached with nginx. Nothing much to do again

Download memcached from http://www.danga.com/memcached/download.bml you might also require a memcache lib available on http://tangent.org/552/libmemcached.html install both of them and the memcached command will be available to you

just type in this on the terminal

memcached -p 11211

Thats it..now memcache is on. Just few more changes in the nginx.conf file and you r ready to zoom your rails app

you just need to write this

location /dynamic_request {
   # append an extenstion for proper MIME type detection
         if ($args ~* format=json) { rewrite ^/dynamic_request/?(.*)$ /dynamic_request.js$1 break; }
         if ($args ~* format=xml)  { rewrite ^/dynamic_request/?(.*)$ /dynamic_request.xml$1 break; }

         memcached_pass 127.0.0.1:11211;

        error_page 404 = @dynamic_request;

}

Also you might require to set the uri so do this

    set  $memcached_key  $uri;

Ok thats done no restart nginx service and your memcache + mongrel cluster with gzip on will be running and ur rails app will be zoooooooooooooming

Njoi

Nginx configuration, expiry headers and gzip component with rails - nginx.conf

Just configured nginx server with rails and here is the nginx.conf file. It also includes gzip component and header expiry which is advisable as per the yslow tool.

# user and group to run as

# number of nginx workers
worker_processes 4;

# pid of nginx master process
#pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

# Number of worker connections. 1024 is a good default
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}

# start the http module where we config http access.
http {
# pull in mime-types. You can break out your config
# into as many include's as you want to make it cleaner
include mime.types;

# set a default type for the rare situation that
# nothing matches from the mimie-type include
default_type application/octet-stream;

# configure log format
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] '
'"$request" $status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

# main access log
access_log /var/log/nginx_access.log main;

# main error log
error_log /var/log/nginx_error.log debug;

# no sendfile on OSX
sendfile on;

# These are good default values.
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay off;
# output compression saves bandwidth
gzip on;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_http_version 1.0;
gzip_comp_level 9;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript application/javascript application/css;


# this is where you define your mongrel clusters.
# you need one of these blocks for each cluster
# and each one needs its own name to refer to it later.
upstream mongrel {
server 127.0.0.1:8000;
server 127.0.0.1:8001;
server 127.0.0.1:8002;
}


# the server directive is nginx's virtual host directive.
server {
# port to listen on. Can also be set to an IP:PORT
listen 80;

# Set the max size for file uploads to 50Mb
client_max_body_size 50M;

# sets the domain[s] that this vhost server requests for


# doc root
root /sites/sitename/public;

# vhost specific access log
access_log /var/log/nginx.vhost.access.

log main;

# this rewrites all the requests to the maintenance.html
# page if it exists in the doc root. This is for capistrano's
# disable web task
# if (-f $document_root/system/maintenance.html) {
# rewrite ^(.*)$ /system/maintenance.html last;
# break;
# }

location / {
# needed to forward user's IP address to rails
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

# needed for HTTPS
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect false;
proxy_max_temp_file_size 0;

if (-f $request_filename) {
expires max;
break;
}


# If the file exists as a static file serve it directly without
# running all the other rewite tests on it
if (-f $request_filename) {
break;
}

# check for index.html for directory index
# if its there on the filesystem then rewite
# the url to add /index.html to the end of it
# and then break to send it to the next config rules.
if (-f $request_filename/index.html) {
rewrite (.*) $1/index.html break;
}

# this is the meat of the rails page caching config
# it adds .html to the end of the url and then checks
# the filesystem for that file. If it exists, then we
# rewite the url to have explicit .html on the end
# and then send it on its way to the next config rule.
# if there is no file on the fs then it sets all the
# necessary headers and proxies to our upstream mongrels
if (-f $request_filename.html) {
rewrite (.*) $1.html break;
}

if (!-f $request_filename) {
proxy_pass http://mongrel;

break;
}

}

error_page 500 502 503 504 /500.html;
location = /500.html {
root /sites/sitename/public;
}
}

}

In my next article i will also post how to configure memcache with rails and nginx

Load Balancing with pound and Mongrel Clustering

In my previous post I have written about mongrel clustering..

Now if you want to add the load balancing feature to it you may use pound. Pound is a software HTTP Load Balancer and Reverse Proxy.

These are the steps how you can configure pound with mongrel cluster. First configure mongrel cluster as per the previous post.

Then download and install pound from http://www.apsis.ch/pound/Pound-2.0.9.tgz

Now the configuration step

Pound.cfg needs to be configured which will reside in /etc/pound/pound.cfg

also a symlink is required to be made

$ sudo ln -s /etc/pound/pound.cfg /usr/local/etc/pound.cfg

A basic version of pound.cfg will look something like this

User        "www-data"
Group       "www-data"
LogLevel    2
Alive       30

ListenHTTP
 Address 123.123.123.123
 Port    80
End

Service
 HeadRequire "Host:.*www.dhavalparikh.co.in.*"
 BackEnd
     Address 127.0.0.1
     Port    8080 
 End
 Session
     Type    BASIC
     TTL     300  
 End
End

Service
 URL ".*.mov"
 BackEnd
     Address 69.12.146.109
     Port    8081 
 End
 Session
     Type    BASIC
     TTL     300  
 End
End

Service
 # Catch All
 BackEnd
     Address 127.0.0.1
     Port    9000 
 End  
 BackEnd
     Address 127.0.0.1
     Port    9001
 End
 Session
     Type    BASIC
     TTL     300
 End


Then start pound with the following command

$ sudo /etc/init.d/pound start

finally you will have mongrel cluster setup done so start mongrel cluster

sudo mongrel_rails cluster::start

Thats it you mongrel cluster with pound configuration is done..
njoi the power of load balancing

Mongrel Clustering with Rails

Hey every one wants to make their site run faster..and there are many ways like caching (page caching, fragment caching, method caching) so on. One other way is using mongrel cluster which will run multiple instance of mongrel on you server which will help to improve website speed to a huge extent.

Let me tell you the steps for doing mongrel clustering .. its really easy..

Step 1 : - Install mongrel cluster gem

sudo gem install mongrel_cluster

Step 2 : - configure cluster and run the config file which will reside in config/mongrel_cluster.yml

mongrel_rails cluster::configure -p 8000 -e production -a 127.0.0.1

Well thats it now here you go


Start the cluster:
mongrel_rails cluster::start

Restart the cluster:
mongrel_rails cluster::restart

Stop the cluster:

mongrel_rails cluster::stop

Well just try these steps and if you are not able to configure it just post a
comment and i will get back to you.

Enjoy better speed :)