Asp Forum - Ruby Scales just fine !

Ruby Maniac

9/25/2007 1:55:00 PM

Just buy a bunch of Quad Core Opterons and get over it !

If you don't think Ruby is scalable just check with the folks at
Twitter - they have been successfully using Ruby for some time now -
all they had to do was buy a ton of compute gear and life is good !

17 Answers

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

9/25/2007 2:23:00 PM

Ruby Maniac wrote:
> Just buy a bunch of Quad Core Opterons and get over it !
>
> If you don't think Ruby is scalable just check with the folks at
> Twitter - they have been successfully using Ruby for some time now -
> all they had to do was buy a ton of compute gear and life is good !

If Twitter is a for-profit venture, I'd be very surprised if usable
details about how they plan and manage load, scalability and capacity
are available without an NDA. This is something we performance engineers
consider "The Family Jewels", although perhaps curious folk in other
disciplines wonder what the fuss is all about. :)

And yes, Google *does* throw a ton of compute gear (and Map-Reduce) at
their searching and indexing, which, as far as I know, is *not* written
in Ruby and does not involve Rails.

And just on the off chance *you* would like to become a capacity
planner, there's to my knowledge only one place outside of a university
where you can learn how:

http://www.perfdynamics.com/Classes/sch...

Tell Dr. Gunther I said "Hello". :)

James Gray

9/25/2007 2:27:00 PM

On Sep 25, 2007, at 9:22 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

> Ruby Maniac wrote:
>> Just buy a bunch of Quad Core Opterons and get over it !
>>
>> If you don't think Ruby is scalable just check with the folks at
>> Twitter - they have been successfully using Ruby for some time now -
>> all they had to do was buy a ton of compute gear and life is good !
>
> If Twitter is a for-profit venture, I'd be very surprised if usable
> details about how they plan and manage load, scalability and capacity
> are available without an NDA.

http://www.slideshare.net/Blaine/scalin...

That slideshow claims they use 8 Sun X4100s.

James Edward Gray II

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

9/25/2007 3:00:00 PM

James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 9:22 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>
>> Ruby Maniac wrote:
>>> Just buy a bunch of Quad Core Opterons and get over it !
>>>
>>> If you don't think Ruby is scalable just check with the folks at
>>> Twitter - they have been successfully using Ruby for some time now -
>>> all they had to do was buy a ton of compute gear and life is good !
>>
>> If Twitter is a for-profit venture, I'd be very surprised if usable
>> details about how they plan and manage load, scalability and capacity
>> are available without an NDA.
>
> http://www.slideshare.net/Blaine/scalin...
>
> That slideshow claims they use 8 Sun X4100s.
>
> James Edward Gray II
>
>
>

Cute ... but they *did* use the E-word! And no family jewels.

Eric Hodel

9/25/2007 4:56:00 PM

On Sep 25, 2007, at 07:22 , M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Ruby Maniac wrote:
>> Just buy a bunch of Quad Core Opterons and get over it !
>>
>> If you don't think Ruby is scalable just check with the folks at
>> Twitter - they have been successfully using Ruby for some time now -
>> all they had to do was buy a ton of compute gear and life is good !
>
> If Twitter is a for-profit venture, I'd be very surprised if usable
> details about how they plan and manage load, scalability and capacity
> are available without an NDA. This is something we performance
> engineers
> consider "The Family Jewels", although perhaps curious folk in other
> disciplines wonder what the fuss is all about. :)

These things are less secret than you think. Twitter's solutions to
scaling issues are going to be inappropriate to your scaling issues.
Knowing the details won't help you, knowing the techniques will.

Ruby Maniac

9/25/2007 6:42:00 PM

On Sep 25, 9:55 am, Eric Hodel <drbr...@segment7.net> wrote:
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 07:22 , M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>
> > Ruby Maniac wrote:
> >> Just buy a bunch of Quad Core Opterons and get over it !
>
> >> If you don't think Ruby is scalable just check with the folks at
> >> Twitter - they have been successfully using Ruby for some time now -
> >> all they had to do was buy a ton of compute gear and life is good !
>
> > If Twitter is a for-profit venture, I'd be very surprised if usable
> > details about how they plan and manage load, scalability and capacity
> > are available without an NDA. This is something we performance
> > engineers
> > consider "The Family Jewels", although perhaps curious folk in other
> > disciplines wonder what the fuss is all about. :)
>
> These things are less secret than you think. Twitter's solutions to
> scaling issues are going to be inappropriate to your scaling issues.
> Knowing the details won't help you, knowing the techniques will.

See also:

http://www.slideshare.net/Georgio_1999/how-to...

and

http://www.slideshare.net/Georgio_1999/how-to-scale-you...

Some of this sort of thing seems a bit over the top in terms of what
one might be required to do when scaling web apps based on, shall we
say, more efficient languages that run faster.

Given the fact that Ruby can be no faster than 1/10th the speed of
let's say almost any other language (take your pick) I would surmise
one might have to work 10x harder to scale a RoR app than if something
more efficient were being used.

RoR gives a double whammy for scalability - Ruby is not all that
speedy and Rails emits SQL Statements with a lot of "*" chars -
combine both and you have scalability issues to be sure. Of course I
know some people who say "*" chars in SQL Statements actually makes
the SQL run faster but then those who say that also don't like to run
benchmarks because benchmarking is seen as being a waste of time and
effort. I did run a benchmark that demonstrate the use of "*" in SQL
statements makes the SQL Engine run anywhere from 10% slower to 880%
slower even when very long lists of column names was not being used as
is the case when "*" is used in place of a list of column names.

On the other side of the coin, RoR is very easy to code and this one
factor alone is generally what people cite as being the real reason
RoR was used. Having coded other languages I can tell you all
languages are easy to code once that language is understood well
enough to make the act of coding enjoyably quick and easy.

Keep in mind, I am a died in the wool Ruby lover like the rest of us
here however when it comes to scalability issues I have seen Ruby
enthusiasts spend a lot of time waiting for their code to run so a bug
can be fixed just so they can wait even more time to get to the next
instance of a bug fix. This tends to place some weight on the side of
the balance where coding with a more performance conscious language
may be more profitable in terms of where one spends their time as
opposed to simply focusing on the easy-to-code side of the equation.

Clever Monkey

9/25/2007 8:37:00 PM

Eric Hodel wrote:
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 07:22 , M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>> Ruby Maniac wrote:
>>> Just buy a bunch of Quad Core Opterons and get over it !
>>>
>>> If you don't think Ruby is scalable just check with the folks at
>>> Twitter - they have been successfully using Ruby for some time now -
>>> all they had to do was buy a ton of compute gear and life is good !
>>
>> If Twitter is a for-profit venture, I'd be very surprised if usable
>> details about how they plan and manage load, scalability and capacity
>> are available without an NDA. This is something we performance engineers
>> consider "The Family Jewels", although perhaps curious folk in other
>> disciplines wonder what the fuss is all about. :)
>
> These things are less secret than you think. Twitter's solutions to
> scaling issues are going to be inappropriate to your scaling issues.
> Knowing the details won't help you, knowing the techniques will.
>
The Twitter folks have been very forthcoming about the trials and
tribulations of scaling up their system to meet demand. All sorts of
details regarding language tweaks, hardware changes and DB schema
improvements were all available to the public.

Now, I'm sure not everything was made public, but they have been more
than transparent about their scalability issues.

Rimantas Liubertas

9/25/2007 8:48:00 PM

> Given the fact that Ruby can be no faster than 1/10th the speed of
> let's say almost any other language (take your pick) I would surmise
> one might have to work 10x harder to scale a RoR app than if something
> more efficient were being used.

That may be true when the language speed is the limiting factor.
I am not sure that's always the case...

--
Regards,
Rimantas
--
http://rim...

Ruby Maniac

9/25/2007 8:53:00 PM

On Sep 25, 1:48 pm, "Rimantas Liubertas" <riman...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Given the fact that Ruby can be no faster than 1/10th the speed of
> > let's say almost any other language (take your pick) I would surmise
> > one might have to work 10x harder to scale a RoR app than if something
> > more efficient were being used.
>
> That may be true when the language speed is the limiting factor.
> I am not sure that's always the case...
>
> --
> Regards,
> Rimantas
> --http://rim...

Are you trying to say a slow inefficient language such as RoR should
be as easy to scale as a faster more efficient language given the
scalability requirements revolve around usability by a growing
population of users ?

Name me some instances when scalability does not require better
performance characteristics ? (Better means faster...)

Rimantas Liubertas

9/25/2007 9:19:00 PM

> Name me some instances when scalability does not require better
> performance characteristics ? (Better means faster...)

Faster what? Language? Or DB? Or network?

Suppose you have two languages you can use for the same application.
Language A can process request in 0.001 second, language B can process
request in 0.00005 second (20x faster). Now they both sit and wait for DB
which gives result to a query in 0.01 second.
Does it matter, which language does nothing faster?
Very small percentage of the request life cycle is spent in the part
that's dependant
on language speed that is why language speed is not always as important.

Regards,
Rimantas
--
http://rim...

Ari Brown

9/26/2007 12:29:00 AM

Soo........ Ruby DOES use multiple cores? I read somewhere that it
didn't (probably this thread).

And if it doesn't use multiple cores, is there any work on it being
able to use them?

Ari
---------------------------------------------------------------|
~Ari
"I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it" --1337est
man alive

comp.lang.ruby

Ruby Scales just fine !

Ruby Maniac

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

James Gray

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

Eric Hodel

Ruby Maniac

Clever Monkey

Rimantas Liubertas

Ruby Maniac

Rimantas Liubertas

Ari Brown

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