After your external applications are set up, all you need is a Litespeed context mapping the / url to either the load balancer or a single web server. Now, you are free to start/stop the mongrel processes as you wish. Here’s a sample mongrel command: mongrel_rails start -d -e production -p xxx1 -P log/mongrel-1.pid mongrel_rails start -d -e production -p xxx2 -P log/mongrel-2.pid So how well does