# Process manager

In this guide we will see how you can start a Strapi application using a process manager.

💡 TIP

In this example we will use PM2 (opens new window).

# Install PM2

PM2 allows you to keep your Strapi project alive and to reload it without downtime.

You will install PM2 globally

The basic usage to start an application with PM2 will be to run a command like this pm2 start server.js.

But here we are facing an issue. In your project you don't have a .js file to run your Strapi application.

So first let's create a server.js file that will let you run the pm2 command.

Path — ./server.js

const strapi = require('strapi');
strapi().start();

Now you will be able to start your server by running pm2 start server.js.

By default there is two important commands.

You can also start your process manager using the yarn start command.

pm2 start npm --name app -- run start

PM2 lets you create a config file to save all information to start your server properly at anytime.

By running pm2 init it will init an ecosystem.config.js in your application.

Then replace the content of this file by the following code.

module.exports = {
  apps: [
    {
      name: 'app',
      script: 'npm',
      args: 'start',
    },
  ],
};

And then run pm2 start ecosystem.config.js to start the pm2 process.

You can see the full documentation of available configuration in the PM2 ecosystem file documentation (opens new window).