# Process manager

✋ CAUTION

This guide might not be up-to-date with Strapi v4. We are currently reworking the "Guides" section as most of the features they cover are now part of Strapi's core.

In this guide we will see how you can start a Strapi application using a process manager. We will use PM2 (opens new window) in this example.

# Install PM2

PM2 allows you to keep your Strapi project alive and to reload it without downtime.

You will install PM2 globally

# Basic usage

# Starting with server.js file

The basic usage to start an application with PM2 will be to run a command like this pm2 start server.js.

But here we are facing an issue. In your project you don't have a .js file to run your Strapi application.

So first let's create a server.js file that will let you run the pm2 command.

// path: `./server.js`

const strapi = require('@strapi/strapi');
strapi().start();

Now you will be able to start your server by running pm2 start server.js.

# Starting with strapi command

By default there are 2 important commands.

  • yarn develop to start your project in development mode.
  • yarn start to start your app for production.

You can also start your process manager using the yarn start command.

pm2 start npm --name app -- run start

# Configuration file

PM2 lets you create a config file to save all information to start your server properly at anytime.

By running pm2 init it will init an ecosystem.config.js in your application.

Then replace the content of this file by the following code.

module.exports = {
  apps: [
    {
      name: 'app',
      script: 'npm',
      args: 'start',
    },
  ],
};

And then run pm2 start ecosystem.config.js to start the pm2 process.

You can see the full documentation of available configuration in the PM2 ecosystem file documentation (opens new window).

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