Running and managing nodejs applications on single server - node.js

Question

Is there a good way to run and manage multiple nodejs apps on a single server?
I've been looking at haibu and nodester, but they seem a little complex for what I am trying to do.
I also was looking at forever and I think that may work with the config file and web gui, but I am not sure how I am going to handle passing the port information via ENV or arguments.

Answer 1

I use Supervisord & Monit, more details and configuration example here: Process Management at Bringr.
Moreover you can specify environnement variable directly from the supervisord configuration file (see sub-process environment). But I personally prefer to add these variables directly inside a ~/.bashrc on each machine.
If the port number isn't going to change for each application (but change between production & development environment). I'll recommend to specify them inside a config.json (or directly inside package.json). And the config.json will contain a different port number for each application depending on the environnement:
{
myapp:{
production:{port:8080},
development:{port:3000}
}
}
And inside myapp.js:
var config = require('./config');
app.listen(config.myapp[process.env.NODE_ENV].port)
With process.env.NODE_ENV declared in ~/.bashrc.

Answer 2

I wrote an app nodegod that I use for a handful deployments of maybe 10 apps each.
nodegod reads an app list from json. It has an internal state machine for each app that handles the app life cycle in a safe manner including restarts, and the web page features stop/start/debug.
The web interface uses web sockets, so that you can manage remote servers over ssh.
As you deploy over rsync, apps restart automatically.
Because nodegod monitors the stdout of other apps, you can capture an app's final breath like segfault and malloc errors.
I use a fork of http-proxy in front of a slew of express instances, so any number of apps can share a single server port per dns for both http and web sockets.
I wrote a haraldops module to read app configuration from outside the source tree. With that you can monitor and get emails whenever something's up with an app.
App configurations I keep in a git repo in the file system.
It's not rocket science, and it all fits very nicely together. Only node and json: SIMPLE gets more done.

Answer 3

If your server has upstart, just use it. I have no luck with forever and similar.
If you want to proceed with upstart, roco would be nice as deployment solution:
roco deploy:setup:upstart
roco deploy

Answer 4

We're constantly trying to improve forever and haibu at Nodejitsu. Seems like the approach you're looking for here is a .forever configuration file for complex options. This feature has been on our backlog for a while now
https://github.com/nodejitsu/forever/issues/124
Check back. I consider it pretty high priority after the next round of performance improvements.

Answer 5

These days I've taken to using dokku which is a OSS clone of heroku. Deploying is as simple as making sure your package.json contains a start script. For example:
"scripts": {
"start": "node index.js"
}
Sample App