Crossover

Zero-downtime Node.js deployments

WARNING: Crossover is an experiment in progress and is not recommended for production use.

Purpose

• Push new versions of an app into production with zero errors and zero dropped requests
• Push new versions using HTTP
• Incrementally roll requests onto the new version, falling back if errors or crashes are encountered

Installation

$ npm install -g crossover

Usage

The example app tarball URLs in these examples actually exist. Feel free to use them for testing.

$ crossover http://crossover-example.s3.amazonaws.com/app1.tgz
[master] preparing worker: http://crossover-example.s3.amazonaws.com/app1.tgz
[master] resolving dependencies
[master] forked worker 51500
[master] forked worker 51501
[worker:51500] starting app
[worker:51501] starting app
[worker:51500] listening on port: 3000
[worker:51501] listening on port: 3000

Packaging

Create a tarball that contains your app.

$ cd ~/Code/myapp
$ tar czvf ~/Slugs/myapp.tgz .

Deploying New Code

$ curl -X POST https://localhost:3000/crossover/release \
    -d "url=http%3A%2F%2Fcrossover-example.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fapp2.tgz"
ok

# meanwhile on the server
[master] releasing: http://crossover-example.s3.amazonaws.com/app2.tgz
[master] preparing worker: http://crossover-example.s3.amazonaws.com/app2.tgz
[master] resolving dependencies
[worker:51500] turning off new connections to app
[worker:51501] turning off new connections to app
[worker:51500] requests completed, exiting
[worker:51501] requests completed, exiting
[master] worker 51500 died
[master] forked worker 52000
[master] worker 51501 died
[master] forked worker 52001

Advanced Usage

Usage: crossover [options] <slug url>

Options:

	-h, --help               output usage information
	-V, --version            output the version number
	-a, --auth <password>    admin password
	-c, --concurrency <num>  number of workers
	-e, --env <url>          environment file
	-p, --port <port>        port on which to listen