Brian Ketelsen {dotcom}

JBoss Rails Plugin

2008-11-21T09:29:00.014-05:00

Last night I jokingly posted on twitter that I'm a Rails Deployment Whore. It's more true than not, I love trying out new deployment solutions looking for the ultimate in scalability, flexibility and ease of deployment. Imagine my surprise when I found the new jboss-rails plugin from Bob McWhirter at OddThesis.org.

History
Back in early 2007 I posted (on this blog even) that I was betting my career on JRuby/JBoss. It turned out OK in the end, but the middle was pretty ugly. A combination of immaturity in JRuby, GoldSpike, our deployment process, and a short development schedule meant that we moved back to plain-old-ruby before we could really prove my JBoss/JRuby theory. Fast forward a few months, Ruby is working fine for WellCare, and Passenger comes out. I loved the concept of Passenger, and WellCare is now happily running Passenger on all of their production sites. In the middle, we used Mongrels behind HAProxy, which is a pretty good solution when you have some processes that may take longer than others. I've since moved on from WellCare, and at my new company we use JRuby on Glassfish exclusively for all of our Rails deployments.

JBoss on Rails
I'm going to write up starting from a fresh Rails 2.1 project, so you can see everything required to deploy. It's really not that much.

Step 1: Download and unzip JBoss AS 5

Step 2: Set the $JBOSS_HOME environment variable to the location of your unzipped JBoss Folder
I downloaded to /Users/briank/Downloads/jboss-5.0.0.CR2 so at the top of my .bash_profile file I added this:
export JBOSS_HOME=/Users/briank/Downloads/jboss-5.0.0.CR2

Step 3: Remove the default 'ROOT' context that's installed in JBoss.
We'll remove the default context so that we can deploy to the / context instead of on a subdirectory.
rm -rf /Users/briank/Downloads/jboss-5.0.0.CR2/server/all/deploy/ROOT.war

Step 4: Install the jboss-rails deployer
The jboss-rails deployer does JBoss magic and virtually links the deployment directory to your actual deployment location. I keep my Rails apps in ~/NetBeansProjects, so even though the JBoss installation is elsewhere, it will serve the app out of my NetBeansProject/ directory. This is pretty powerful as we'll see later!
Download the rails deployer here

Unzip it:
unzip jboss-rails-deployer-1.0.0-beta-1.zip

Install it:
cd jboss-rails-deployer-1.0.0-beta-1
cp -R jboss-rails.deployer $JBOSS_HOME/server/all/deployers/

Step 5: Install the jboss-rails plugin
./script/plugin install git://github.com/bobmcwhirter/jboss-rails-plugin.git

Step 6: Create your database - I'll use mysql for this example
mysqladmin -u root -p create jbosstest_development

Step 7: Change all references in the plugin folders for the server type.
Several of the rake tasks and other code assumes that you deploy to $JBOSS_HOME/server/all, while others assume $JBOSS_HOME/server/default. Above in step 4, we put our deployer in $JBOSS_HOME/server/all so that's what we're going to use. Search through all the code in the plugin and its rake tasks and make sure they all use /server/all.

Step 8: Install the JDBC gems and adapters for your db installation
rake jboss:rails:jdbc:install

Step 9: Deploy your application to JBoss
rake jboss:rails:deploy

Step 10: Start JBoss
rake jboss:as:run

Conclusion
I didn't cover any of the advanced features of the plugin or of the concepts behind the jboss-rails integration that Bob's done. One of the most exciting to me is the scheduler process that makes a nice mini-cron out of a directory in your Rails app. I'm all for getting rid of CRON and encapsulating that processing code in my Rails app. The other extremely cool bit of this plugin is the support for Capistrano deployments. Because the integration with JBoss is a virtual symlink to your Rails deployment folder, Bob's included a cap recipe that operates exactly as you'd expect one to. One of the problems with the previous WAR style deployments in my mind has always been the inability to easily move forward and backwards. With JBoss-Rails you get the best of all worlds. I'm really impressed with Bob's work so far and with the attention and commitment that JBoss is bring to Rails deployment.

DTI Data is an awesome disk drive recovery company

2008-11-20T12:16:00.004-05:00

I had reason recently to attempt recovery of data on two hard drives that had been reformatted. Often in the disk drive world, reformatting isn't really erasing the data, and knowing that I was hopeful that we could recover the data that existed before the reformat.

First I sent the drives off to a company that advertised heavily on the web using drive recovery type keywords. I got a call the next day. The guy said he could "repair" the drives for $5000, then recover the data. He said some cylinders were broken and the read heads on one of the drives were bad. I knew this not to be true, so I told him to ship us back the drives. He immediately reversed course and told me that he could recover the data much cheaper, I could just name my price! Fool me once, shame on you... So when we got the drives back I was eager to get them recovered by professionals. Enter DTI Data a very reputable drive recovery company here in the Tampa area.

DTI Data spent a few days with the drives, and determined that they were actually zeroed out during the reformat. Somebody didn't want us to find the data that they erased. Oh well, no great loss. But the best part was their return fedex to me. It included both drives, nicely packaged, and our check back. They returned our money because they couldn't help. On one end of the spectrum, some jackass is trying to dupe us into paying $5000 for repairs our drives didn't need. On the other end of the spectrum is DTI Data, doing the right thing by their customers.

I've learned a valuable lesson in this. And next time I need drive recovery, I know exactly where to go. Kudos to DTI Data for running a business with integrity.

Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp - Vote early, vote often!

2008-09-15T14:29:00.003-05:00

If you remember a few weeks back, my forever-sainted wife sent me to the Rock and Roll fantasy camp in Orlando. It was one of the best days of my life!!

Video is here.

Ignoring the fact that we sounded awful, I'd appreciate a vote for my band. You can vote once for each email address you have. And I know some of you are tipping the email address scales out there.

If you click on the Five Blokes and a Bird band, that's mine. Please take a minute to vote for my band, the winners will get to go to the Rock & Roll fantasy camp in London for a week in November and record in Abbey Road Studios. Again, it would be better if you didn't apply the "Does Brian's band actually deserve to go to London" filter before you make this vote.

Please pass along to anyone you can ask to vote as well. Don't be shy, wives, cousins, neighbors.... :) This could turn my "day of a lifetime" into a WEEK of a lifetime!

Remember, a programmer can't live on Ruby alone.

Installing Passenger on CentOS 5.2 x86_64

2008-08-26T12:21:00.002-05:00

I am installing Passenger on CentOS 5.2 and ran into a tough spot where it wouldn't find Apache, even though I had apache installed through Yum. The answer was to install the x86_64 version of the apr-devel package, as yum's dependency checker only installed the 32 bit version. See http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=2934 for details on the bug.


yum install apr-devel

That did the trick!

Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp

2008-08-18T11:48:00.002-05:00

If you don't care for non-technical posts, move on - this one is all Rock and Roll!

Some who know me will remember that I've been screwing around on the guitar since I was a kid. I never got "good", and I never really did anything with it. All of that changed on Friday when my wife sent me to Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp for a day.

Thursday night, when I got home from work she told me that she had already arranged with my office for me to have the day off. She said we were going to Orlando for some back-to-school shopping for the kids. It wasn't until bedtime that she told me the real story. She was dropping me off at 8AM, and I'd spend the rest of the day learning from the Masters of Rock from the past three decades. I'd end the day with a live show, opening for Extreme and King's X at the House of Blues in Orlando.

Obviously, my jaw hit the floor and I didn't sleep a wink. Friday morning finally came, and I actually sat down at breakfast next to Glen Hughes - Deep Purple basist. Glen coincidentally ended up being my band leader. So along with a few other regular joes, Glen turned us into the new band "Five Blokes and a Birdie". We practiced for about 8 hours, with a small break in the early afternoon for some classes from the other legends there. Winger, AC/DC, Slaughter, The Cars, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Guns 'n Roses, the camp counselor list reads like a who's who in rock.

At roughly 7:30, we hit the stage at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney. We opened with Superstition (Stevie Wonder), and followed up with American Woman and You Really Got Me. Now clearly, we weren't very good after just a day's practice, so our counselors chose pretty basic 3 chord songs to help us look good.

I just can't emphasize how much fun the whole day was. I had the time of my life practicing with and learning from these patient rockers. And I thought I'd be nervous about playing the House of Blues, but the whole thing was a blur. I played pretty well, only had a few fat-fingered moments, and I didn't choke in front of the screaming throng of "fans", who at that early hour of the evening mostly family and friends of fellow campers. My wife stood right at the front barrier and took a hundred pictures with my iPhone.

My favorite picture is the one at the top of this article. I'm on the left, Glen Hughes (Deep Purple) is singing and playing bass, then on the right is Chris Slade(AC/DC). It's fun to be in good company.

I highly recommend the experience to any musicians, whether you're good, bad, or years out of practice like me. It was a day I'll never forget!

iPhone Development

2008-07-10T13:22:00.002-05:00

I won't violate any NDA's that I've signed with the mothership, but I am excited to announce that the iPhone app that I've submitted to the App Store has already been purchased a few times. Nothing like seeing your baby fly. Go, baby, go. More here shortly, when the NDA expires. I think that's tomorrow :)

Passenger 2.0 RC2

2008-06-19T08:34:00.003-05:00

I just upgraded ICanHazBinky from Phusion's Passenger (mod_rails) 1.05 to 2.0 RC1 yesterday, but somehow I missed the fact that they're already at RC2. I downloaded the new gem and installed it without problems on our SliceHost slice. Overall I'm very pleased with the speed of the new 2.0 code. It "feels" significantly faster than the 1.0 code. Does anybody have any empirical data to compare? I should have run some load testing before I upgraded, next time I won't forget.

I can haz fun?

2008-06-18T21:43:00.002-05:00

The peeps are working hard on ICanHazBinky (for those of you who aren't following along - it's the site we just released based on the LovdByLess framework that allows people to upload cute pictures of their kids and caption them using the never-to-die LOLCat meme). One of the cool things we're working on now is the ability to preview a picture you've captioned before you commit to the text and font size on the picture. Kevin's become quite the file_column guru, and he's wrangling it to do his bidding with both local storage as it suits him and Amazon S3 storage for permanence. It sure is fun doing a project like this. And all of our families have loaded up the cute pictures you'd expect!

I Can Haz Binky?

2008-06-05T19:04:00.002-05:00

Well I finally broke down and created an LOL clone site. It's been on my mind to do for a good 6 months now, and I finally recruited some friends to help me out. You can see our handiwork at http://www.icanhazbinky.com. The astute in the group will also notice that we built the site on the LovdByLess framework. We can't praise that framework enough. Instead of months time to market, it dropped us down to a few weekends. Big Kudos to the LessEverything team, they really built an amazing framework to start us off.

Developing websites in Ruby on Rails is always fun, but it seems like even more fun if you can somehow include pictures of your kids. That's what I Can Haz Binky is all about... pictures of kids, with full LOL-ification!

Check it out, let me know what you think in the comments.

mod_rails (Passenger) and pre-loading of Ruby classes

2008-04-20T20:00:00.004-05:00

I spent a good (well, I didn't think it was good) hour today fighting a deployment to my Slicehost VPS today using mod_rails. I used mod_rails because it's so easy to drop a rails app up an create a vhost in Apache. Well there's a little-known fact about mod_rails that I guarantee will bite you eventually. mod_rails preloads all .rb files in your deployment directory. Even the ones named __unused_thing.rb or even worse, environment.rb inside /apps/controllers. Someone had taken a copy of the /config/environment.rb file and put it in /app/controllers. mod_rails gleefully loaded up that rogue environment.rb file and threw up with an ugly error about not being able to find /app/controllers/boot.rb

It took me an hour to actually get the real error out of the error message. To be fair, the error message listed the file /app/controllers/environment.rb but in my wisdom, I thought that it was mod_rails guessing my app's root wrong somehow. Or I thought I didn't set the docroot in Apache right. If I had read the error a little better, I would have solved this one faster. Since I didn't write the app that I was deploying, I was pretty sure nobody would ever put an environment.rb file in the controllers folder. Hmpf. But who would have guessed that mod_rails loads all Ruby files? That's certainly not the way that old dog Mongrel did it.

Thank god for testing. You DO have good tests don't you?

Phusion Passenger : Performance

2008-04-11T21:15:00.002-05:00

Just a quick test with openload yielded 146 transactions per second on my little MacBook in Rails "production" mode for a page that hits the database. Not bad at all. I watched 'top' while the load test was running, and there were hundreds of Rails applications spawned by Passenger; the processor maxed at 75% but never went higher.

Not bad, Phusion team, not bad at all.

Phusion Passenger - simple Rails deployment on Mac OS X Leopard

2008-04-11T19:52:00.007-05:00

I have been waiting rather impatiently for Phusion's Passenger gem to drop, so when I saw that it would be released "today" I watched Rubyforge all day for the gem to drop.

I started off with a bit of disappointment, however, because the first message I got stated that Passenger wasn't stable on the built-in Apache2 that comes with Leopard. Well that wasn't about to slow me down.

sudo port install apache2

I simply installed apache2 from macports and moved on.

sudo passenger-install-apache2-module

This line installs and compiles the apache2 module. Again some slight disappointment because the compilation still finds my local Apple installation first. The docs say I've got to export APXS2 variable. I tried every combination of sudo and export to get the export to apply to the passenger-install-apache2-module command, but no matter what I did, the export seemed to go out of scope before the command did.

sudo su
export APSX2=/opt/local/apache2/bin/apxs
passenger-install-apache2-module

There! Now I simply followed the directions that appear on the screen :


--------------------------------------------
The Apache 2 module was successfully installed.

Please edit your Apache configuration file, and add these lines:

   LoadModule passenger_module /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
   RailsSpawnServer /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/bin/passenger-spawn-server
   RailsRuby /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby

After you restart Apache, you are ready to deploy any number of Ruby on Rails
applications on Apache, without any further Ruby on Rails-specific
configuration!

Press ENTER to continue.


--------------------------------------------
Deploying a Ruby on Rails application: an example

Suppose you have a Ruby on Rails application in /somewhere. Add a virtual host
to your Apache configuration file, and set its DocumentRoot to
/somewhere/public, like this:

   
      ServerName www.yourhost.com
      DocumentRoot /somewhere/public
   

And that's it! You may also want to check the Users Guide for security and
optimization tips and other useful information:

  /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/doc/Users guide.html

Enjoy Passenger, a product of Phusion (www.phusion.nl) :-)
http://www.modrails.com/

Now Passenger starts with Apache, but it the permissions on my Rails folder are preventing it from starting. More updates to follow!

Later that evening...

I moved the Rails app to /Library/WebServer/myapp and restarted Apache. This led to a Passenger screen with an error page complaining "bignum too big to convert into `long'". That means that it's trying to set the user to one that doesn't exist. I looked at the stack trace and it was obviously trying to do the "set user" part of the process. I added "RailsDefaultUser briank" and now I've got the (all too familiar) Rails 500 error screen. This is like progress! I look at the log files and there's a production.log file there! Well I know what this problem is, there's no production database. I've got two options: I can change the production entries to match development, or I can figure out how to run in Development mode. Let's do the right thing - it's a development server... Back in a flash!

Now with this vhost config:


   
      ServerName www.mysite.local
      RailsDefaultUser briank
      RailsEnv development
      DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/myapp/public

Passenger is serving my application, but things in the public folder aren't being served. You'd think it would be a little easier than this! More to follow.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner! After viewing this post I just removed the offending Order deny,allow Deny from all line and we've got ourselves a Rails app.

It wasn't nearly as single-click as the video made it out to be. Was it me? Sound off on my pathetic command line skillz in the comments.

JRuby at acts_as_conference

2008-02-09T10:45:00.001-05:00

Charlie just finished his JRuby talk at acts_as_conference in Orlando. He brought down the house, showing off JRuby's super-duper-performance, NetBeans IDE debugging and GlassFish application server deployment as a gem file. WOW! Sun has really stepped up their efforts on the JRuby front. It's clear that they're looking to make a real impact in the Rails market, and I can see how companies wanting to deploy Rails with a little less voodoo/pain would love the JVM deployment path that Sun is offering.

Her name isn't Ruby

2008-01-24T13:49:00.000-05:00

I tried hard to convince my wife that Ruby was a perfectly normal thing to name your child, but it just didn't fly. Evelyn arrived last night at 5:21PM, weighing in at 7lbs 15oz. She's perfect in every way. Both mom and baby are healthy. Pictures here. I'm thinking about bringing her to acts_as_conference... we'll see how it goes. She's already written her first Rails app, and is anxiously awaiting having some of her patches to core accepted.

Scaling JRuby -- Real, Practical, ENTERPRISE Rails

2007-09-30T13:49:00.000-05:00

We've reached the end over at Enterprise Rails and I'm excited to announce that the final product is one to be proud of. Tomorrow we launch the complete rewrite of our .Net websites. It's been 27,000 lines of Ruby replacing untold thousands more of .Net code. We spent some good money on a nice design, then validated that design with all our end users and business constituents. We designed an Enterprise-wide content management system and put the content back in the hands of the business. Now they can deploy changes to the site without any IT intervention. Where previously we had to compile and deploy code to change a misspelling, the business users can now make and preview the change real-time. Deployment is a simple approval workflow away.

We had an amazing team doing the work. From content management to backend integration, from testing and design to deployment, Kevin, Kristie, Ken, Chris, Dipendra, Radhika, Reid #1, Reid #2, Bashar, Bill and Brad drove this project to completion. Along the way we learned much about Rails, and Ruby -- but especially about ourselves and each other. A finer team can't be found anywhere else.

We've really pushed the limits of Rails deployment too. We've deployed the sites on JBoss as a single war file. JBoss is configured as a cluster, so all sessions are shared, and we're using JBoss's excellent TreeCache module. Gone are the days of Monit watching her Mongrels. Our deployment is fast, scalable and really easy to monitor and manage. Countless thousands of man-hours have been put into deploying on the JVM, we're simply riding on those coattails. To handle more traffic, we bring up a new JBoss server with the same configuration file as the others. It self-announces, self-joins and self-deploys the latest code. To deploy new code, we drop a new war file in the /farm directory. The cluster partitions old vs. new traffic and nobody misses a beat or notices the change. This is truly the bleeding edge of Rails deployment. The JRuby team should be proud of all that they've accomplished over the past 12 months. This wasn't even possible last year at this time.

Somebody pinch me. I never thought doing Rails in the Enterprise would be this slick. Our CIO, Anil Kottoor took a chance on a wild dream that I shared with him, and I can't thank him enough for the opportunity to take it to fruition. He stepped back and let industry veteran Jim Young lead us through the corporate maze to success. I have learned more from people named Jim in my life than I have learned from all others combined... I knew it was an omen when Jim joined our team.

Lots to do...

2007-09-09T16:25:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because we're working hard over at Enterprise Rails putting out a full rewrite of our 9 websites in Ruby on Rails. That's going nicely, but I wanted to put out a little teaser about the technologies we're using.

Since it's an enterprise Rails deployment, we couldn't do it justice if it wasn't deployed on an Enterprise Class server farm. So we "threw together" a little JBoss cluster and we're deploying on JRuby.

The best thing by far is the JBoss Cache implementation. Using JBoss Cache in Rails is dead simple with a little Ruby-Fu, which means you can expect a plugin soon.

We think this deployment model is going to make people wake up and smell the power that is inherent in JRuby. It's simple, fast and STOOPID-SCALABLE(tm).

Go check out JRuby and see what all the fuss is about. Sun is doing good things, and we're riding these Rails on their train.

Upsetting News - #930 on Working With Rails

2007-08-12T20:29:00.000-05:00

I'm very disappointed. I got around to looking at my Working With Rails profile tonight and I noticed that my popularity is 88%. Whatever does that mean? Seems to be some sort of amalgamation of how many people have recommended me... But I've never asked anyone to recommend me, so being #930 isn't terrible, I suppose. But it should be much better! I made three major releases of the RailsLiveCD! It's been downloaded over 150,000 times just from my home server... That's got to be worth more than #930.
Recommend me on Working With Rails --- Right the wrong.

2007-06-29T20:27:00.000-05:00

You know what makes me happy? Bandwidth. Verizon FIOS upgraded to 20MBps in Florida recently and I have to say that when you're downloading from somebody who has the pipe, it's really a dream. Look at these numbers!

I remember when we were really excited about the 300 baud modem in our Tandy 1000. Back when I was a kid...

Senior Rails Developer needed in Tampa

2007-06-15T05:15:00.001-05:00

If you want to be part of one of the largest Rails shops in Florida, shoot me a line at bketelsen@gmail.com We're looking for one Senior level Ruby on Rails hacker. Must have solid experience with Rails and MySQL, JRuby is a plus.

Position : Senior Software Engineer
Location : Tampa, FL
Pay : Competitive
Tools : Ruby, Rails, MySQL, Java, Solr, .Net
Start : Immediate
Contact : BKetelsen@gmail.com

RailsLiveCD Version 0.3.1 - Just in time for RailsConf 2007

2007-05-15T21:03:00.000-05:00

Just because some folks still use this URL for tracking the RailsLiveCD distribution, there's a new version over at RailsLiveCD.org.

p.latyp.us software

2007-05-03T22:08:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased to announce that I've kicked off development on a great application with Jim James, the godfather of IT in the Travel space. We're going to use Ruby on Rails to take the travel space up to a new level of audience participation, and I'm quite excited to be on board. You can read our blog over at http://blog.p.latyp.us
It's a bit quiet right now, because we're just getting started. But you can expect some good posts coming soon.

RailsConf 2007

2007-05-03T21:53:00.000-05:00

There is always somebody smarter than me thinking up cool things. Dr. Nic is one that comes to mind more often than not. I signed up for Dr. Nic's sweet MyConfPlan site and found the JSON widget that I'm now proudly sporting on the sidebar of this blog. At my office we're doing a "Usability Study" right now and the group that's doing the work for us had a hard time describing what Web 2.0 really is. I used this as the perfect example. Not only is the MyConfPlan a 2.0 sort of site in terms of visuals and functionality, but exposing the data for use/mashup elsewhere is the pinnacle of the Web 2.0 movement for me.

So check out my RailsConf schedule over to the right. Maybe while I'm there both of the RailsLiveCD users will say "hi". I'll be the one with the MacBook.

Keep Off Rails!

2007-04-01T15:27:00.000-05:00

At the Florida State Fair in Tampa last month I saw this sign and had to get a picture. It must be an omen.

InfoQ Article Posted

2007-02-14T14:42:00.000-05:00

My first of hopefully many articles was published this morning on InfoQ. I enjoyed talking with Aaron Batalion and the development crew. The bits and bytes they're drip-feeding on their blog have me on the edge of my seat. If you haven't seen it yet, hop on over and read the whole thing (I suggest reading them start to finish because there are quite a few background posts before the real meat hits).

RailsConf 2007

2007-02-12T23:41:00.000-05:00

Great News! I registered for RailsConf 2007 today... It will be my first, so I'm a bit nervous. But my good buddy Jim from p.latyp.us is going too, so we'll be able to drink some beers and hack Rails code for a whole weekend. I might have to get that Mac Book Pro before May now.

Move to Blogger

2007-02-03T20:46:00.000-05:00

I have moved to Blogger. Now that they offer custom domain names, there is little reason for me to keep my own blog code somewhere. Please resubscribe using the link at the bottom of the page. Maybe this will help me keep that comment spam down to a minimum.

Betting on JRuby

2007-02-02T21:57:00.000-05:00

The upcoming release of JRuby 1.0 a.k.a "rails support jruby" is
going to be the tipping point for "Enterprise" Rails development.
There are already several large companies betting their web sites on
Rails. And I can't fault them. Rails is the most compelling web
framework out there right now for several reasons. But by supporting
Rails on the JVM, JRuby will catapult corporate Rails development
into levels the smart guys 37Signals never dreamed of.

Here is why:

Corporations are lead by people who are paid to produce results.
Sometimes those people like to take calculated risks on new
technologies. A technology like Rails is easy for a smaller company, a startup or an unknown entity because it's inexpensive to host and easy to get started. But for a bigger corporation, the fear will always be scalability. Now we all know Rails scales. That's not something that needs to be reproven by me or anyone else. But what they don't say is how hard they have to work to make it scale. In a Java shop, it's a matter of bringing up new Tomcat, Grizzly, JBoss or Glassfish instances. Keep feeding it RAM and CPUs and you'll scale until something else (like your database) breaks.

I am about to propose JRuby for a corporate web infrastructure for two main reasons:

Java is easy to deploy
JRuby helps Rails talk to Enterprisey-Things(tm) like SSO/LDAP, JMS, ESBs, etc.

At the end of the day it's still my beloved Ruby running Rails. But it's wearing a tie.