[Rails] Revisiting deployment on a dedicated server

I'm in the midst of a few new Rails deployments as well as being tasked to revise an existing older deployment to help improve performance.

So, I'm wondering what sort of setup is preferable these days for a dedicated server? The basics I'm aiming to start with are the latest CentOS/RHEL, PostgreSQL, Ruby 2.x, Rails and Apache.

Is Passenger still the way to go these days?

Just curious what others are using these days. BTW- I've looked into and have used third party hosting, like Heroku, but for these particular projects we have to keep the apps and data on physical servers managed by the customers for legal reasons.

Thanks!


Phil