operating rails: what about after you deploy?

There are a million tutorials out there showing you how to build a blog in Rails (in just 15 minutes!) and how to deploy that Rails app to some cloud provider (in just 5 minutes!), but what about after that first half-hour? When the guide says "this tutorial of course isn't production ready", what actually is production-ready? Let's talk about operating Rails apps in production.

Transcript

1. André Arko / RubyConf Thailand / January 31, 2026 what about after you deploy? Operating Rails
2. André Arko @indirect bundler.io gem.coop rv.dev
3. tutorials don't include deploying & operating
4. okay, maybe hosting company tutorials then?
5. hosting tutorials aren't "production-ready"
6. fi nish a deploy tutorial and... more questions than answers
7. the goal today
8. con fi dence yours, your team's, your users'
9. errors data speed security lead time
10. errors
11. fi rst: tests
12. staging environment
13. production environment
14. exception reporting & uptime monitoring
15. honeybadger.io sentry.io
16. observability (?) well, logs, at least
17. metrics
18. traces
19. traces are powerful
20. you need communication channels
21. data user data, your data, server data
22. can you rebuild your app?
23. where's the code?
24. the database?
25. untested backups aren't real
26. stored fi les?
27. data forward compatibility
28. migrations are hard now
29. speed ruby code, database queries, http responses
30. why speed?
31. track and monitor it
32. always use percentiles
33. use pro fi ling
34. use CDNs
35. security of your data & your servers
36. the safest data is what you don't store
37. defend with updates and monitoring
38. security policy & security contact
39. the DORA project
40. lead time from commit to live in production
41. slower and more paranoid: worse outcomes
42. automate the fastest possible deploys
43. back to overall strategy
44. Welcome to DevOps! I'm so sorry.
45. we can help! spinel.coop
46. downtime is inevitable
47. good luck. @indirect @indirect.io arko.net @spinel-coop @spinel.coop spinel.coop