Configure Web Services¶

Like most Django applications, Nautobot runs as a WSGI application behind an HTTP server.

Nautobot comes preinstalled with uWSGI to use as the WSGI server, however other WSGI servers are available and should work similarly well. Gunicorn is a popular alternative.

This document will guide you through setting up uWSGI and establishing Nautobot web services to run on system startup.

Nautobot includes a nautobot-server start management command that directly invokes uWSGI. This command behaves exactly as uWSGI does, but allows us to maintain a single entrypoint into the Nautobot application.

$ nautobot-server start --help

Configuration¶

Copy and paste the following into /opt/nautobot/uwsgi.ini:

[uwsgi]
; The IP address (typically localhost) and port that the WSGI process should listen on
http-socket = 127.0.0.1:8001

; Number of uWSGI workers to spawn. This should typically be 2n+1, where n is the number of CPU cores present.
processes = 5

# Number of threads per worker process
threads = 3

# Set internal buffer size
buffer-size = 8192

# Set the socket listen queue size
listen = 1024

# Enable master process
master = true

# Enable threading
enable-threads = true

# Try to remove all of the generated file/sockets
vacuum = true

# Do not use multiple interpreters (where available)
single-interpreter = true

This configuration should suffice for most initial installations, you may wish to edit this file to change the bound IP address and/or port number, or to make performance-related adjustments. See uWSGI documentation for the available configuration parameters.

Setup systemd¶

We'll use systemd to control both uWSGI and Nautobot's background worker process.

Nautobot service¶

First, copy and paste the following into /etc/systemd/system/nautobot.service:

[Unit]
Description=Nautobot WSGI Service
Documentation=https://nautobot.readthedocs.io/
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment="NAUTOBOT_ROOT=/opt/nautobot"

User=nautobot
Group=nautobot
PIDFile=/var/tmp/nautobot.pid
WorkingDirectory=/opt/nautobot

ExecStart=/opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start --pidfile /var/tmp/nautobot.pid --ini /opt/nautobot/uwsgi.ini

Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Nautobot Worker service¶

Next, copy and paste the following into /etc/systemd/system/nautobot-worker.service:

[Unit]
Description=Nautobot Request Queue Worker
Documentation=https://nautobot.readthedocs.io/
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment="NAUTOBOT_ROOT=/opt/nautobot"

User=nautobot
Group=nautobot
WorkingDirectory=/opt/nautobot

ExecStart=/opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server rqworker

Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Configure systemd¶

Because we just added new service files, you'll need to reload the systemd daemon:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Then, start the nautobot and nautobot-worker services and enable them to initiate at boot time:

$ sudo systemctl enable --now nautobot nautobot-worker

Verify the service¶

You can use the command systemctl status nautobot.service to verify that the WSGI service is running:

● nautobot.service - Nautobot WSGI Service
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/nautobot.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2021-03-05 22:23:33 UTC; 35min ago
       Docs: https://nautobot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
   Main PID: 6992 (nautobot-server)
      Tasks: 16 (limit: 9513)
     Memory: 221.1M
     CGroup: /system.slice/nautobot.service
             ├─6992 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             ├─7007 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             ├─7010 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             ├─7013 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             ├─7016 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             └─7019 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />

Once you've verified that the WSGI workers are up and running, move on to HTTP server setup.