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Deploying your Sails.js application

Note: You are viewing the Sails.js v0.9.x documentation. If you're looking for information on v0.8.x, please visit here.

Before You Deploy

Before you launch any web application, you should ask yourself a few questions:

  • What is your expected traffic?
  • Are you contractually required to meet any uptime guarantees, e.g. a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
  • What sorts of front-end apps will be "hitting" your infrastructure?
    • Android apps
    • iOS apps
    • desktop web browers
    • mobile web browsers (tablets, phones, iPad minis?)
    • tvs, watches, toasters..?
  • And what kinds of things will they be requesting?
    • JSON?
    • HTML?
    • XML?
  • Will you be taking advantage of realtime pubsub features with Socket.io?
    • e.g. chat, realtime analytics, in-app notifications/messages
  • How are you tracking crashes and errors?
    • Take a look at Sails' log config

Deploying On a Single Server

Node.js is pretty dern fast. For many apps, one server is enough to handle the expected traffic-- at least at first.

Configure
  • Configure your app to run on port 80 (if not behind a proxy like nginx)
  • Configure the 'production' environment so that all of your css/js gets bundled up, and the internal servers are switched into the appropriate environment (requires linker)
  • Enable csrf protection for your POST, PUT, and DELETE requests
  • Enable SSL
  • IF YOU'RE USING SOCKETS:
    • Configure config/sockets.js to use socket.io's recommended production settings here
      • e.g. enable the flashsocket transport
Deploy

In production, instead of sails lift, you'll want to use forever to make sure your app will keep running, even if it crashes.

  • Install forever: sudo npm install -g forever
  • From your app directory, start the server with forever: forever start app.js --prod
    • This is the same thing as using sails lift --prod, but if the server crashes, it will be automatically restarted.

Scaling

If you have the immediate expectation of lots of traffic to your application (or better yet, you already have it!), you'll want to set up a scalable architecture that your app can scale as more and more people use it.

Example architecture
                       Sails.js server
                             ....                 
                    /  Sails.js server  \      /  Database (e.g. Mongo, Postgres, etc)
Load Balancer  <-->    Sails.js server    <-->    Socket store (Redis)
                    \  Sails.js server  /      \  Session store (Redis)
                             ....                 
                       Sails.js server
Configuring your app for a clustered deployment
  • Make sure the database(s) for your models (e.g. MySQL, Postgres, Mongo) is scalable (e.g. sharding/cluster)
  • Configure your app to use a shared session store
    • Support for redis is built in (see the adapter options in config/session.js)
  • IF YOU'RE USING SOCKETS:
    • Configure your app to use a shared socket store
      • Support for redis is built in (see the adapter options in config/sockets.js)
      • Note: If you'd rather not set up a socket store, a workable solution for your use case may be enabling sticky sessions at your load balancer.
  • Ensure none of the other dependencies you might be using in your app rely on shared memory.
Deploying a Sails cluster on multiple servers
  • Deploy multiple instances (aka servers running a copy of your app) behind a load balancer
  • Configure your load balancer to terminate SSL requests
    • Because of this, you won't need to use the SSL configuration in Sails-- the traffic will already be decrypted

FAQ

Can I use environment variables?

You can also configure the port and environment settings in Sails using environment variables. NODE_ENV=production sails lift PORT=443 sails lift

Where do I put my production database credentials? Other settings?

For your other deployment/machine-specific settings, namely any kind of credentials, you should use config/local.js.
It's included in your .gitignore file by default so you don't inadvertently commit your credentials to your code repository.

config/local.js

// Local configuration
// 
// Included in the .gitignore by default,
// this is where you include configuration overrides for your local system
// or for a production deployment.
//
// For example, to use port 80 on the local machine, override the `port` config
module.exports = {
    port: 80,
    environment: 'production',
    adapters: {
        mysql: {
            user: 'root',
            password: '12345'
        }
    }
}
How do I get my Sails app on the server?

Is your Node.js instance already spun up? When you have the ip address, you can go ahead and ssh onto it, then sudo npm install -g forever to install Sails and forever for the first time.

Then git clone your project (or scp it onto the server if it's not in a git repo) into a new folder on the server and cd into it, and forever start app.js

Deploying to Modulus?

TODO

Deploying to NodeJitsu?

To deploy to NodeJitsu, you'll need to make some minor modifications to your configuration:

Open up config/local.js in your app folder. In here, you'll need to add the following lines.

    // Port this Sails application will live on
	port: 80,
	host: 'subdomain.jit.su',

The host: is new to the file and is not created by default. You will need to add this. Nodejitsu will ask you for the subdomain when you run jitsu deploy

Deploying to Heroku?

TODO

In the mean time, @chadn posted an example Heroku deployment with Sails.js here: https://github.com/chadn/heroku-sails

Getting help

These days, it's getting easier and easier to deploy powerful applications at scale. That said, there isn't always time to do these things yourself. Sails.js is maintained by my company, Balderdash, a Node.js consultancy in Austin, TX. If your company needs professional support, reach out and we're happy to help.