Capistrano to deploy rails application - how to handle long migrations?

Question

So I am using Capistrano to deploy a rails application to my production server (apache+passenger) and at the moment deployment usually goes along the lines:

Answer 1

My production deploys generally follow this process:

1. cap production deploy:web:disable which directs all requests to a static maintenance page
2. cap production deploy
3. migrations etc, testing each of the servers individually to make sure things are OK
4. cap production deploy:web:enable to make the site work as it should

John Topley's response gives you some good in depth info here.