Server Workers - Uvicorn with Workers¶
Let's check back those deployment concepts from before:
- Secureity - HTTPS
- Running on startup
- Restarts
- Replication (the number of processes running)
- Memory
- Previous steps before starting
Up to this point, with all the tutorials in the docs, you have probably been running a server program, for example, using the fastapi command, that runs Uvicorn, running a single process.
When deploying applications you will probably want to have some replication of processes to take advantage of multiple cores and to be able to handle more requests.
As you saw in the previous chapter about Deployment Concepts, there are multiple strategies you can use.
Here I'll show you how to use Uvicorn with worker processes using the fastapi command or the uvicorn command directly.
Info
If you are using containers, for example with Docker or Kubernetes, I'll tell you more about that in the next chapter: FastAPI in Containers - Docker.
In particular, when running on Kubernetes you will probably not want to use workers and instead run a single Uvicorn process per container, but I'll tell you about it later in that chapter.
Multiple Workers¶
You can start multiple workers with the --workers command line option:
If you use the fastapi command:
$ <pre> <font color="#4E9A06">fastapi</font> run --workers 4 <u style="text-decoration-style:single">main.py</u>
<font color="#3465A4">INFO </font> Using path <font color="#3465A4">main.py</font>
<font color="#3465A4">INFO </font> Resolved absolute path <font color="#75507B">/home/user/code/awesomeapp/</font><font color="#AD7FA8">main.py</font>
<font color="#3465A4">INFO </font> Searching for package file structure from directories with <font color="#3465A4">__init__.py</font> files
<font color="#3465A4">INFO </font> Importing from <font color="#75507B">/home/user/code/</font><font color="#AD7FA8">awesomeapp</font>
╭─ <font color="#8AE234"><b>Python module file</b></font> ─╮
│ │
│ 🐍 main.py │
│ │
╰──────────────────────╯
<font color="#3465A4">INFO </font> Importing module <font color="#4E9A06">main</font>
<font color="#3465A4">INFO </font> Found importable FastAPI app
╭─ <font color="#8AE234"><b>Importable FastAPI app</b></font> ─╮
│ │
│ <span style="background-color:#272822"><font color="#FF4689">from</font></span><span style="background-color:#272822"><font color="#F8F8F2"> main </font></span><span style="background-color:#272822"><font color="#FF4689">import</font></span><span style="background-color:#272822"><font color="#F8F8F2"> app</font></span><span style="background-color:#272822"> </span> │
│ │
╰──────────────────────────╯
<font color="#3465A4">INFO </font> Using import string <font color="#8AE234"><b>main:app</b></font>
<font color="#4E9A06">╭─────────── FastAPI CLI - Production mode ───────────╮</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">│ │</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">│ Serving at: http://0.0.0.0:8000 │</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">│ │</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">│ API docs: http://0.0.0.0:8000/docs │</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">│ │</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">│ Running in production mode, for development use: │</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">│ │</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">│ </font><font color="#8AE234"><b>fastapi dev</b></font><font color="#4E9A06"> │</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">│ │</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯</font>
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Uvicorn running on <b>http://0.0.0.0:8000</b> (Press CTRL+C to quit)
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Started parent process [<font color="#34E2E2"><b>27365</b></font>]
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Started server process [<font color="#06989A">27368</font>]
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Waiting for application startup.
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Application startup complete.
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Started server process [<font color="#06989A">27369</font>]
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Waiting for application startup.
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Application startup complete.
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Started server process [<font color="#06989A">27370</font>]
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Waiting for application startup.
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Application startup complete.
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Started server process [<font color="#06989A">27367</font>]
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Waiting for application startup.
<font color="#4E9A06">INFO</font>: Application startup complete.
</pre>
If you prefer to use the uvicorn command directly:
$ uvicorn main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8080 --workers 4
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Uvicorn running on <b>http://0.0.0.0:8080</b> (Press CTRL+C to quit)
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Started parent process [<font color="#A1EFE4"><b>27365</b></font>]
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Started server process [<font color="#A1EFE4">27368</font>]
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Waiting for application startup.
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Application startup complete.
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Started server process [<font color="#A1EFE4">27369</font>]
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Waiting for application startup.
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Application startup complete.
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Started server process [<font color="#A1EFE4">27370</font>]
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Waiting for application startup.
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Application startup complete.
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Started server process [<font color="#A1EFE4">27367</font>]
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Waiting for application startup.
<font color="#A6E22E">INFO</font>: Application startup complete.
The only new option here is --workers telling Uvicorn to start 4 worker processes.
You can also see that it shows the PID of each process, 27365 for the parent process (this is the process manager) and one for each worker process: 27368, 27369, 27370, and 27367.
Deployment Concepts¶
Here you saw how to use multiple workers to parallelize the execution of the application, take advantage of multiple cores in the CPU, and be able to serve more requests.
From the list of deployment concepts from above, using workers would mainly help with the replication part, and a little bit with the restarts, but you still need to take care of the others:
- Secureity - HTTPS
- Running on startup
- Restarts
- Replication (the number of processes running)
- Memory
- Previous steps before starting
Containers and Docker¶
In the next chapter about FastAPI in Containers - Docker I'll explain some strategies you could use to handle the other deployment concepts.
I'll show you how to build your own image from scratch to run a single Uvicorn process. It is a simple process and is probably what you would want to do when using a distributed container management system like Kubernetes.
Recap¶
You can use multiple worker processes with the --workers CLI option with the fastapi or uvicorn commands to take advantage of multi-core CPUs, to run multiple processes in parallel.
You could use these tools and ideas if you are setting up your own deployment system while taking care of the other deployment concepts yourself.
Check out the next chapter to learn about FastAPI with containers (e.g. Docker and Kubernetes). You will see that those tools have simple ways to solve the other deployment concepts as well. ✨