The Top 5 Scaling Issues for Ruby on Rails Applications

Rails DOES Scale, If Implemented Correctly

Patrick Karsh
3 min readJan 30, 2024
What is keeping your ruby on rails app from going to the moon?

Ruby on Rails, a powerful and popular web framework, has been the backbone of many successful web applications. However, as applications grow, scaling becomes a critical challenge. This article explores the top five scaling issues Ruby on Rails applications face and offers insights into navigating these challenges.

Database Performance and Scaling

At the heart of most Rails applications lies a database, and as applications scale, database performance becomes critical. Two major issues are prevalent:

N+1 Query Problem: This issue arises when the application executes one query to retrieve a set of records, followed by additional queries for each record. As the dataset grows, this can lead to a significant performance hit. Optimizing queries and using eager loading can mitigate this issue.

Database Scaling Challenges: Handling large volumes of data or high query rates requires strategies like database indexing, implementing read replicas, and efficient query optimization. Without these, the database can quickly become a bottleneck.

Memory Consumption

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Patrick Karsh
Patrick Karsh

Written by Patrick Karsh

NYC-based Ruby on Rails and Javascript Engineer leveraging AI to explore Engineering. https://linktr.ee/patrickkarsh