Docker is a technology which allows you to run your Vendure application inside a container.
The default installation with @vendure/create includes a sample Dockerfile. For production, a multi-stage Dockerfile keeps build-time dependencies out of the final image:
New projects created with @vendure/create include the build:dashboard script. If your project does not use the Dashboard, remove the RUN npm run build:dashboard line.
This Dockerfile can then be built into an "image" using:
This same image can be used to run both the Vendure server and the worker:
Here is a breakdown of the command used above:
docker run - run the image we created with docker build-dp 3000:3000 - the -d flag means to run in "detached" mode, so it runs in the background and does not take control of your terminal. -p 3000:3000 means to expose port 3000 of the container (which is what Vendure listens on by default) as port 3000 on your host machine.--name vendure-server - we give the container a human-readable name.vendure - we are referencing the tag we set up during the build.npm run start:server - this last part is the actual command that should be run inside the container.The worker command does not publish port 3000 because the worker does not serve the Vendure API. If you enable the worker health check server, publish that health check port instead.
Managing multiple docker containers can be made easier using Docker Compose. In the below example, we use the same Dockerfile defined above, and we also define a Postgres database to connect to:
Kubernetes is used to manage multiple containerized applications. This deployment starts the Vendure image we created above as both worker and server.
If you wish to deploy with Kubernetes or some similar system, you can make use of the health check endpoints.
This is a regular REST route (note: not GraphQL), available at /health.
The response is unconditional and does not check the database or any other dependency. Since v3.6.0 the
strategies configured in systemOptions.healthChecks are no longer executed. See the
health checks guide for details.
Although the worker is not designed as an HTTP server, it contains a minimal HTTP server specifically to support HTTP health checks. To enable this, you need to call the startHealthCheckServer() method after bootstrapping the worker:
This will make the /health endpoint available. When the worker instance is running, it will return the following:
Vendure Cloud runs production Vendure for you. Autoscaling, observability, and zero-downtime deploys, built by the team behind Vendure.
See Vendure Cloud