While on the road, I attended a single session during the Ruby SIG at SD Forum.

It was Jason Hoffman’s excellent presentation on Scaling with Rails.

A couple key philosophies reinforced during the session:

• Keep it simple, no matter how big you think you will get
• Keep an open mind (they moved from FreeBSD to Solaris)

Key technologies this event is leading me to investigate include:

• ZFS file system in Solaris
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Jumbo Frames

I have long believed that monster multi-proc boxes, dedicated to a single task, are usually overkill. The focus should be on memory and IO. Jason confirmed this with real world examples.

Who knew power would be one of the bigger issues?

Anyway, check out his presentation and upcoming seminars here.