Scaling Rails Applications in the Cloud
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in < 2 hours
The hashtag for this talk is:
#SX09-573

A Typical Case Study
32
The Inevitable Mass Adoption of Our Product
Public
Beta
8
Techcrunch50
Me, Josh, Friends & Family
and a 4
Private Beta
few other
people
The Inexorable March of Time

I’m Mike Subelsky
@subelsky / @otherinbox

What is Cloud
Computing?

Solving problems
across a flexible grid
of nodes

...which you consume
as a utility

The nodes are
elastic

The nodes are
loosely coupled
Tasking System
Computing Computing Computing Computing
Instance Instance Instance Instance
Permanent Storage

The nodes are
distributed

The nodes are
ephemeral

The nodes are
disposable

What are the
benefits?

Lower cost
Greater efficiency
Greater flexibility

You want flexibility

My Cloud Grows With Me!
32
Heady, Viral, Asymptomtotic Growth of Userbase
Public
Beta
8
Techcrunch50
Me, Josh, Friends & Family
and a 4
Private Beta
few other
people
The Blink of an Eye

What are the costs?

Some loss of control
Potential for lock-in
Greater complexity

You chose a language
that sublimates
complexity

aws-S3
RightAWS
Ruby/EventMachine
Ruby Shines Here
Hpricot
memcache-client
ActiveSupport

Capistrano
Chef
Rubber
PoolParty
Scalr
Roll Your Own

What do you need
to get started?

Tasking System
Computing Computing Computing Computing
Instance Instance Instance Instance
Permanent Storage
Bonus: Non-RDBMS

Our Sky
SMTP Sync
Staging
Staging
Staging
Staging
Staging
Staging
Processing Master DB
Staging
Staging
Staging
Staging
Staging
Experiment
Workers Web

Web Cloud
Mongrels &
Memcached
JSON
Mongrels &
HTML Apache HAProxy Master DB
Memcached
Atom Mongrels &
Memcached
Message Bodies
Mailbox Export Requests,
Domain Registration
SQS
S3

Staging &
Experiments

Sync Cloud

Autoscaling

SMTP Cloud
o
et Ta
SQS
m s
na e kin
e
Fil ars g
S3 P
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3

Loose Coupling Is How I Sleep
At Night
US-EAST-1C
to Ta
e SQS
am skin
en e
Fil ars g
S3 P
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3
US-EAST-1B
to Ta
me SQS s
na e kin
ile rs g
3 F Pa
S
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3

Loose Coupling Is How I Sleep
At Night
US-EAST-1C
to Ta
me SQS s
na e kin
ile rs g
3 F Pa
S
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3
X XX
US-EAST-1B
o
t Ta
me SQS s
a kin
en e
Fil ars g
3P
S
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3

Loose Coupling Is How I Sleep
At Night
X
US-EAST-1C
to Ta
me SQS s
na e kin
ile rs g
3 F Pa
S
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3
X
US-EAST-1B
o
t Ta
me SQS s
a kin
en e
Fil ars g
3P
S
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3

Loose Coupling Is How I Sleep
At Night
X
US-EAST-1C
to Ta
me SQS s
na e kin
ile rs g
3 F Pa
S
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3
X
US-EAST-1B
o
t Ta
me SQS s
a kin
en e
Fil ars g
3P
S
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3

Loose Coupling Is How I Sleep
At Night
X
US-EAST-1C
to Ta
me SQS s
na e kin
ile rs g
3 F Pa
S
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3
X
US-EAST-1B
o
t Ta
me SQS s
a kin
en e
Fil ars g
3P
S
Postfix MailSender MailReceiver MailParser Master DB
le
Ra
Fi
w
Mb
x
bo
ox
M
Fil
w
e
Ra
S3

Loose Coupling Is How I Sleep
At Night

What It Looks Like

Processing Cloud
MessageParser
h
s
pu
cks Tasks
MessageParsing Queue
a
allb e MessageClassfier Queue MessageClassifier
c
rd nam
o AnyFeatureWeWant Queue
ec file
R
ive S3
ct
A
AnyFeatureWorker
Message Created

Workers
• MessageExporter
• DailyUpdateSender
• RegistrationWorker
• BackupWorker

The Database Is a
Single Point of
Failure

How We Cope
Hourly
EBS Volume
Snapshots
Weekly
Master DB
Dumps
Expensive Queries
Memcached

A Dark But
Illustrative Tale
with QuickTime

Manual Stuff
mkdir /vol
mount /vol /dev/sdj
sudo god start mysqld

Manual Stuff
change database.yml by hand (yuck)
queue mail to redeliver

(Wasted)
Troubleshooting:
15 mins

Provisioning new
database:
15 mins

If there was a next
time...

(standard programmer
optimism applies)
< 10 minutes

Replication?
Sharding?

Key-Value?
Columns?

Logging gem Splunk
Logging
Good ol’ fashion tail

Zenoss
Hoptoad
Slow query log
Dash
Monitoring
RightScale
Alertra New Relic

Questions?
mike@oib.com
@subelsky
@otherinbox

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Thank
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