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Configure queue process

  • Updated

Note

This information is only relevant for customers with an on-premise instance.

Xentral 22.1 comes with a queue component to normalize workloads. The queued jobs are executed by a long running worker process.

Command

Command to start the worker manually:

php /xentral_root_dir/artisan queue:work

Command to stop the worker manually:

php /xentral_root_dir/artisan queue:restart

Note

The command is called “restart” but it will only stop the process.

For more information and command options visit the Laravel documentation.

Process Control System

You should use a process Control System or process monitor to restart workers when they shut down or crash.

Any system that has the ability to automatically start a process via console command when it is not running will do.

Example: Systemd

You may define and run a service as the process control system using systemd on Linux.

  1. Define the service

    1. create a file like /etc/systemd/system/queue_worker@.service (the @ is important)

    2. put the configuration in that file

      example:

      [Unit]
Description=Runs and keeps alive the artisan queue:work process

[Service]
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
StartLimitIntervalSec=0
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/xentral/
User=<worker_user>
ExecStart=php /var/www/xentral/artisan queue:work --max-time=3600

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

  2. Replace /var/www/xentral with the root directory of your xentral installation.

    1. Reload daemon

      systemctl daemon-reload

    2. Run the first worker

      systemctl start queue_worker@1
# enable service on every boot
systemctl enable queue_worker@1

    3. You may run additional workers by repeating the command with subsequent numbers

      systemctl start queue_worker@2
systemctl enable queue_worker@2

systemctl start queue_worker@3
systemctl enable queue_worker@3
.
.
.

Example: Supervisor

You may use Supervisor as process control system to configure the queue process.

Visit the Supervisor Documentation for more information on how to use Supervisor.

configuration example:

[program:queue-worker]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=php /var/www/xentral/artisan queue:work --max-time=3600
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stopasgroup=true
killasgroup=true
numprocs=2
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/xentral/storage/logs/queue-worker.log
stopwaitsecs=3600

Visit the Laravel Documentation for more information on the configuration.

Regular Restart

When using a process control system, it is important to regularly stop and restart the worker process. One way to achieve this is by using the following options of the artisan queue:work command:

  • --max-jobs=1000 - The worker stops after processing certain amount of jobs. More Information

  • --max-time=3600 - The worker stops after a certain amount of time (seconds). More Information

A combination of both options is possible.

Tip

Tinker around with these values as you seem fit according to your experience. E.g. if a worker often exceeds its memory limit, you should consider restarting the workers more often.

Amount of workers

You may run multiple worker processes at the same time. The amount of worker is controlled differently by different process control systems. For Systemd you need to start several services, Supervisor uses the numprocs property.

Take the following into consideration for the decision on how many workers should run.

  • How many unprocessed jobs are there?

    Queued jobs are stored in the queue_jobs table. When the jobs become too many you may add more workers.

  • Performance

    More workers working jobs leads to higher CPU and RAM usage and might affect the response-time of the application.

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