The NATS server supports running as a Windows service. In fact, this is the recommended way of running NATS on Windows. There is currently no installer; users should use sc.exe
to install the service:
sc.exe create nats-server binPath= "%NATS_PATH%\nats-server.exe [nats-server flags]"
sc.exe start nats-server
The above will create and start a nats-server
service. Note that the nats-server flags should be provided when creating the service. This allows for running multiple NATS server configurations on a single Windows server by using a 1:1 service instance per installed NATS server service. Once the service is running, it can be controlled using sc.exe
or nats-server.exe --signal
:
REM Reload server configuration
nats-server.exe --signal reload
REM Reopen log file for log rotation
nats-server.exe --signal reopen
REM Stop the server
nats-server.exe --signal stop
The above commands will default to controlling the nats-server
service. If the service is another name, it can be specified:
nats-server.exe --signal stop=<service name>
For a complete list of signals, see process signaling.
The Windows service system requires communication with programs that run as Windows services. One important signal from the program is the initial "ready" signal, where the program informs Windows that it is running as expected.
By default nats-server
allows itself 10 seconds to send this signal.
If the server is not ready after this time, the server will signal a failure to start.
This delay can be adjusted by setting the NATS_STARTUP_DELAY
environment variable to a suitable duration (e.g. "20s" for 20 seconds, "1m" for one minute).
This adjustment can be necessary in cases where NATS is correctly running from command-line, but the service fails to start in this timeframe.