NYC LOCAL: Thursday 24 July 2008 UNIGROUP: Brian Gupta on High Performance Ruby on Rails

[secretary]

<blockquote
  what="official UNIGROUP announcement"
  edits="some material removed to shorten long announcement">

 Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:46:48 -0400 (EDT)
 From: Unigroup_of_NY <unilist@unigroup.org>
 Subject: Reminder: UNIGROUP Meeting 24-JUL-2008 (Thu): Server Performance: 
Deploying and Scaling (Ruby on) Rails

 NOTE: The Unigroup July 2008 meeting is going to happen this week,
       at NEW meeting location in SoHo!  Please RSVP now!

 =================================================================
 UNIGROUP OF NEW YORK - UNIX USERS GROUP - JULY 2008 ANNOUNCEMENTS
 =================================================================

    -----------------------------------
 1. UNIGROUP'S JULY 2008 MEETING NOTICE
    -----------------------------------

       When:  THURSDAY, July 24th, 2008    (** Special: 4th Thursday **)

      Where:  ** NEW LOCATION **
              Bway.Net
              Suite 404
              568 Broadway     (at Prince Street, North East Corner)
              SoHo Manhattan, New York City
              ** Please RSVP (not mandatory) **
              ** Building Lobby Sign-in will be required **

       Time:  6:15 PM - 6:25 PM  Registration
              6:25 PM - 6:45 PM  Ask the Wizard, Questions,
                                 Answers and Current Events
              6:45 PM - 7:00 PM  Unigroup Business and Announcements
              7:00 PM - 9:30 PM  Main Presentation

              ---------------------------------------------------------
      Topic:  Server Performance: Deploying and Scaling (Ruby on) Rails
              ---------------------------------------------------------

    Speaker:  Brian Gupta,
              Brandorr Group

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    INTRODUCTION:
    -------------

    The Search for New Unigroup Meeting Space:

    Unigroup would like to thank the handful of people who have been
    looking for, checking on, and/or suggesting potential new meeting
    locations for our meetings!  The search for an ideal location is
    still proceeding.  In the mean time, we have found a location in
    SoHo to hold our July meeting.

    Meeting Planning:

    Our FreeBSD Networking Stack meeting had to be postponed
    due to speaker unavailability, but it will be rescheduled when
    our speaker George Neville-Neil of the The FreeBSD Project Core
    Team is available again.  We hope to cover recent advances in
    the stack, including recent support for 10G Ethernet.

    We are planning a Launch Meeting (at Sun) for upcoming releases
    of Solaris (and OpenSolaris Project Indiana).

    Novell is also interested in hosting a meeting on SuSE Linux
    (possibly on the Real-Time Linux Kernel, which was being
    demonstrated at the SIFMA 2008 show).

    We are also working on a potential meeting on Linux Real-Time
    Messaging (as used in financial/trading systems).

    This Month's Meeting:

    For our July 2008 meeting, many of you will recognize our
    speaker Brian Gupta, who is a Unigroup member, and a leader
    in the NYC OpenSolaris User group.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS:
    ---------------------

    To REGISTER for this event, please RSVP by using the Unigroup
    Registration Page:
          http://www.unigroup.org/unigroup-rsvp.html

    This will allow us to automate the registration process.
    (Registration will also add you to our mailing list.)
    Please avoid emailed RSVPs.

    Please continue to check the Unigroup web site and meeting page,
    for any last minute updates concerning this meeting.  If you
    registered for this meeting, please check your email for any last
    minute announcements as the meeting approaches.  Also make sure
    any anti-spam white-lists are updated to _ALLOW_ Unigroup traffic!
    If you block Unigroup Emails, your address will be dropped from
    our mailing list.

    Please RSVP as soon as possible.

    Note: RSVP is not mandatory for this location, but it does help
          us to properly plan the meeting (food, drinks, handouts,
          seating, etc.).

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    MAIN PRESENTATION
    -----------------

    Topic: Server Performance: Deploying and Scaling (Ruby on) Rails

    Ruby on Rails has a reputation, as being difficult or impossible to
    scale.  In this session we will review some of the techniques used to
    scale a Rails site.  We will review techniques such as load balancing,
    database optimization, and caching.  In addition we will cover some
    tools and techniques that you will start to need as your site grows.
    These tools range from monitoring and management, to load testing
    tools.

    Detailed Presentation Outline:

     0) A bit on Recent Rails Releases

     1) Improving the performance of static serving

        - High Performance Front Ends (Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx)
        - CDN

     2) Mongrel Web server, and the contenders

        - Mongrel
        - Ebb
        - Thin

     3) Software load balancing

        - Nginx
        - Apache
        - Haproxy
        - Pen
        - Pound
        - UIltraMonkey

     4) Rails Caching

        - Fragment and Page Caching
        - File Based Page Caching
        - memcached

     5) Database scaling techniques

        - Tuning
        - innodb vs myisam, merge tables, memory caches/buffers
        - replication
        - mysqlproxy
        - sharding
        - memcached

     6) Sessions

        - Default MyISAM Sessions
        - Scalable Alternatives
            - Fastsessions
            - Session cookies
            - MemCache sessions

     7) Automation and managing system configuration

        - Puppet
        - Capistrano

     8) Managing your daemons with Monit or G-d

     9) Virtualization and what it gets you

    10) Benchmarking and load testing

        - ab
        - httperf
        - siege
        - JMeter
        - Grinder

    11) Developers need to be on board

    12) Resources: Books, websites, blogs, etc.

    13) Monitoring

        - Nagios
        - Cacti

    14) Version control - Scaling your development team

    15) Services

    16) The Future

        - Rubinious (Ruby VM)
        - Apache based modrails
        - Other Ruby frameworks


    Web Resources:
    --------------

    Ruby on Rails
      http://www.rubyonrails.org/

    The Rails FAQ:
      http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/FAQ

    The Rails Forum:
      http://railsforum.com/

    Working With Rails:
      http://workingwithrails.com/faq/about

    Ruby Inside, Rails Tricks:
      
http://www.rubyinside.com/19-rails-tricks-most-rails-coders-dont-know-131.html

    Rails Conference: Proceedings
      http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/public/schedule/proceedings

    Hot Topic: Developing iPhone applications using Ruby on Rails and Eclipse
      
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-iphoneruby1/?ca=dgr-btw03os-eclipse-iphoneruby1&amp;S_TACT=105AGX59&amp;S_CMP=GRsitebtw03

    Ruby
      http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Speaker Biography:
    ------------------

    Brian Gupta:  Life long computer nerd.  15+ years UNIX and network
    administration.  Open source advocate.  Currently leading up
    Brandorr Consulting Group.  Member of the following advocacy
    groups: New York OpenSolaris UG, UNIGROUP, NYLUG, NYCBUG, LIspNYC,
    and NYCRuby.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Company Biography:
    ------------------

    Brandorr Group - Small and growing consulting team focused on
    supporting Rails startups, particularly in the cloud computing
    space.  (Operations and developer support for Rails deployed on
    FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris.)

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Giveaways:
    ----------

    Addison-Wesley Professional/Prentice Hall PTR has been kind
    enough to provide us with some of their books, which we will
    continue to raffle off as giveaways at our meetings.

    O'Reilly has been kind enough to provide us with some of their
    books, which we will continue to raffle off as giveaways at our
    meetings.

    Unigroup would like to thank both companies for the support
    provided by their User Group programs.

    Note: The chances tend to be about 1 in 5, that any attendee of
    our meeting will walk away with a fairly valuable giveaway
    (ie. most books are valued between $30 and $60)!

    ** Thanks to our friends at Sun Microsystems, Unigroup also has
       some Solaris 10 DVDs to raffle off.

    As always, all of the books will be available for review at the
    start of the meeting.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Fee Schedule:
    -------------

        Yearly Membership (includes all meetings):      $ 50.00
        Non-Member Single Meeting:                      $ 20.00
        Student Yearly Membership (with ID):            $ 25.00
        Non-Member Student Single Meeting (with ID):    $  5.00

      * Payment Methods: Cash, Check, American Express.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Food:
    -----

    Complimentary Food and Refreshments will be served.  This
    includes "wraps" such as turkey, roast beef, chicken, tuna
    and grilled vegetables as well as assorted salads (potato,
    tossed, pasta, etc), cookies, brownies, bottled water and
    assorted SOFT beverages.

    ** Note: We will be using our normal caterer for this meeting.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Directions:
    -----------

       Bway.Net
       Suite 404
       568 Broadway (at Prince Street, North East Corner)
       SoHo Manhattan
       New York City

    Located on Broadway, just North of the North East corner of
      Prince Street, and South of Houston Street.

    Building lobby sign-in is required at the guard's desk.

    We believe free street parking becomes available at 6pm.

    Nearest mass transit stations are: 'R/N' (Prince Street),
      'B/D/F/V' Broadway-Lafayette, and '6' (Spring Street).

    This facility has free Wi-Fi and a VGA Projector/Screen.

    -----

    Please mark this meeting on your calendar and join us!
    Please tell your friends about Unigroup!

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 < some material elided />

    --------------------
 5. UNIGROUP INFORMATION
    --------------------

    Unigroup is one of the oldest and largest Unix User's Groups serving
    the Greater New York City Regional Area since the early 1980s.
    Unigroup is a not-for-profit, vendor-neutral and member funded
    volunteer organization.  Unigroup holds regular and special event
    meetings throughout the year on technical topics relating to Unix
    and the Unix/Linux/BSD User Community.

    Unigroup holds regular meetings planned for (at a minimum) the Third
    THURSDAY of Odd Months.  We generally try to hold Field Trip or
    Vendor Specific Meetings on the Even Months, although we do have the
    ability to hold monthly meetings at our new downtown meeting location.

    Planned regular meeting dates are (usually 3rd Thursdays):
      7/24/2008, 9/18/2008, 10/16/2008 ??, 11/20/2008, 1/15/2009...
    Watch for our Special Event meetings at the various trade shows in NYC
    as well as "Field Trips" to the facilities of local hardware and
    software vendors.

    =========================================================================
    = For Unigroup Information, Events and Meeting Announcements be sure to =
    = visit our World Wide Web Home Page:                                   =
    =       http://www.unigroup.org                                         =
    =========================================================================

    For further information or to get on the Unigroup Electronic Mail Mailing
    List send an EMail message to:
         unilist (-a_t-) unigroup.org

    To contact the Board of Directors of Unigroup, send an EMail message to:
         uniboard (-a_t-) unigroup.org

    If you have recently attended a meeting and you are not receiving
    Email announcements, please send us an Email and we will make
    corrections to our lists.

    Please Email the Board with any suggestions, especially potential
    meeting topics and speakers.  Unigroup welcomes contributions and
    content suggestions for our newsletter.  Unigroup is a volunteer
    organization and we need your assistance!  Please let us know if you
    can help!

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 -Rob Weiner
  Unigroup Executive Director
  unilist (-a_t-) unigroup.org
  http://www.unigroup.org
  
</blockquote>


Distributed poC TINC:

Jay Sulzberger <secretary@lxny.org>
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org