I gave this short presentation at the November bmore-on-rails meeting last night. Flip Sasser also presented an overview of Resque, and Michael Dotterer showed us a bit about background_job.

We decided that delayed_job is an easy and solid way to get background tasks running in your Rails app, but if you are a massive site that needs a heavy-duty and configurable solution, then Resque may be what you need. Resque’s complexity makes this a non-trivial decision! Start with delayed_job since it’s so quick to implement, and you can always choose another solution later.

Want to get delayed_job running in your app in 10 minutes? Follow the steps in Delayed Gratification with Rails.