I have a manifest to setup a Docker container before I have a Dockerfile. I'm still trying to figure out my preferred method of deployment, so in the meantime I figured I should try different methods to make an informed judgment.

I'm using Redis to support Sidekiq to support background processing.

Node is installed for asset compilation during deployment.

For running a VM locally with Vagrant. It can be a little irritable, but it's open source and free, so I'm not complaining. I would probably use VMWare, but I don't want to pay for it right now.

I'm using puppet to configure my servers. This makes it really simple to ensure that I have the same environment. There is a bit of a learning curve, but the repeatability definitely makes it worth the effort. I found puppet to be a little easier to pick up relative to chef, but I've used both. They're both great solutions.

I really like that there are a lot of modules available on the puppet forge that are being actively maintained.

I don't have a strong preference between using Apache and nginx, but I find that the config files for nginx to be much more manageable.

Gardenbed installs all of the tools that are necessary to deploy a Ruby on Rails application to a VPS.

Vagrant allows me to ensure that anyone I'm collaborating with will be able to test my web application in the same environment. I also use Vagrant to setup VMs that I can use to refine my Capistrano recipes.

I'm using PostgreSQL as the backend for my web applications. I like that I get the benefits of a SQL database while also being able to use features like HSTORE.

To keep code and manage collaboration.

To keep track of who is visiting the repo, but Github recently started offering something similar with https://github.com/cyrusstoller/RevTilt/graphs/traffic.

To keep track of who is visiting the site.

Because I like having more control of my deployment, I am currently hosting this on DigitalOcean. I don't need to worry about arbitrary row limits and I can be sure that the app is always running.

If you want to run this for free on a single dyno, you can use heroku

For deploying to a VPS like DigitalOcean. This pairs nicely with https://github.com/cyrusstoller/gardenbed.

To find bottlenecks and to help with debugging and monitoring

For sending emails. I use this primarily for password resets in this application.

To make sure that I don't push bugs to production.