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[catagits/Catalyst-Manual.git] / lib / Catalyst / Manual / Deployment / FastCGI.pod

=head1 NAME

Catalyst::Manual::Deployment::FastCGI - Deploying Catalyst with FastCGI

=head1 FastCGI Deployment

FastCGI is a high-performance extension to CGI. It is suitable
for production environments, and is the standard method for deploying Catalyst
in shared hosting environments.

=head2 Pros

=head3 Speed

FastCGI performs equally as well as mod_perl.  Don't let the 'CGI' fool you;
your app runs as multiple persistent processes ready to receive connections
from the web server.

=head3 App Server

When using external FastCGI servers, your application runs as a standalone
application server.  It may be restarted independently from the web server.
This allows for a more robust environment and faster reload times when
pushing new app changes.  The frontend server can even be configured to
display a friendly "down for maintenance" page while the application is
restarting.

=head3 Load-balancing

You can launch your application on multiple backend servers and allow the
frontend web server to load-balance between all of them.  And of course, if
one goes down, your app continues to run fine.

=head3 Multiple versions of the same app

Each FastCGI application is a separate process, so you can run different
versions of the same app on a single server.

=head3 Can run with threaded Apache

Since your app is not running inside of Apache, the faster mpm_worker module
can be used without worrying about the thread safety of your application.

=head2 Cons

You may have to disable mod_deflate.  If you experience page hangs with
mod_fastcgi then remove deflate.load and deflate.conf from mods-enabled/

=head3 More complex environment

With FastCGI, there are more things to monitor and more processes running
than when using mod_perl.

XXX - FIXME, note not just apache!

=head2 Standalone FastCGI Server

In server mode the application runs as a standalone server and accepts
connections from a web server.  The application can be on the same machine as
the web server, on a remote machine, or even on multiple remote machines.
Advantages of this method include running the Catalyst application as a
different user than the web server, and the ability to set up a scalable
server farm.

To start your application in server mode, install the FCGI::ProcManager
module and then use the included fastcgi.pl script.

    $ script/myapp_fastcgi.pl -l /tmp/myapp.socket -n 5

Command line options for fastcgi.pl include:

    -d -daemon     Daemonize the server.
    -p -pidfile    Write a pidfile with the pid of the process manager.
    -l -listen     Listen on a socket path, hostname:port, or :port.
    -n -nproc      The number of processes started to handle requests.

See below for the specific web server configurations for using the external
server.

=head1 WEB SERVERS

Any web server which supports FastCGI should work with Catalyst. Configuration recipies for
well-known web servers are linked below, and we would welcome contributions from people
deploying Catalyst against other web servers.

=head2 Apache

L<Catalyst::Manual::Deployment::Apache::FastCGI>

=head2 nginx

L<Catalyst::Manual::Deployment::nginx::FastCGI>

=head2 lighttpd

L<Catalyst::Manual::Deployment::lighttpd::FastCGI>

=head2 Microsoft IIS

L<Catalyst::Manual::Deployment::IIS::FastCGI>

=head1 AUTHORS

Catalyst Contributors, see Catalyst.pm

=head1 COPYRIGHT

This library is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.

=cut