Running in production

Kinto is a standard python application.

Recommended settings for production are listed below. Some insights about deployment strategies are also provided.

Because we use it for most of our deploys, PostgreSQL is the recommended backend for production.

Monitoring

In order to enable monitoring features like statsd, install extra requirements:

pip install "cliquet[monitoring]"

And configure its URL:

# StatsD
cliquet.statsd_url = udp://carbon.server:8125

Counters

Name Description
users Number of unique user IDs.
authn_type.basicauth Number of basic authentication requests
authn_type.fxa Number of FxA authentications

Timers

Name Description
authentication.permits Time needed by the permissions backend to allow or reject a request
view.hello.GET Time needed to return the hello view
view.heartbeat.GET Time needed to return the heartbeat page
view.batch.POST Time needed to process a batch request
view.{resource}-{type}.{method} Time needed to process the specified {method} on a {resource} (e.g. bucket, collection or record). Different timers exists for the different type of resources (record or collection)
cache.{method} Time needed to execute a method of the cache backend. Methods are ping, ttl, expire, set, get and delete
storage.{method} Time needed to execute a method of the storage backend. Methods are ping, collection_timestamp, create, get, update, delete, delete_all, get_all
permission.{method} Time needed to execute a method of the permission backend. Methods are add_user_principal, remove_user_principal, user_principals, add_principal_to_ace, remove_principal_from_ace, object_permission_principals, check_permission

Heka Logging

At Mozilla, applications log files follow a specific JSON schema, that is processed through Heka.

In order to enable Mozilla Heka logging output:

# Heka
cliquet.logging_renderer = cliquet.logs.MozillaHekaRenderer

With the following configuration, all logs are structured in JSON and redirected to standard output (See 12factor app). A Sentry logger is also enabled.

[loggers]
keys = root, kinto, cliquet

[handlers]
keys = console, sentry

[formatters]
keys = generic, heka

[logger_root]
level = INFO
handlers = console, sentry

[logger_kinto]
level = INFO
handlers = console, sentry
qualname = kinto

[logger_cliquet]
level = INFO
handlers = console, sentry
qualname = cliquet

[handler_console]
class = StreamHandler
args = (sys.stdout,)
level = INFO
formatter = heka

[handler_sentry]
class = raven.handlers.logging.SentryHandler
args = ('http://public:secret@example.com/1',)
level = INFO
formatter = generic

[formatter_generic]
format = %(asctime)s %(levelname)-5.5s [%(name)s][%(threadName)s] %(message)s

[formatter_heka]
format = %(message)s

PostgreSQL setup

In production, it is wise to run the application with a dedicated database and user.

postgres=# CREATE USER prod;
postgres=# CREATE DATABASE prod OWNER prod;
CREATE DATABASE

Once storage and cache are modified in .ini, the tables need to be created with the cliquet command-line tool:

$ cliquet --ini production.ini migrate

Note

Alternatively the SQL initialization files can be found in the Cliquet source code (cliquet/cache/postgresql/schema.sql and cliquet/storage/postgresql/schema.sql).

Running with uWsgi

To run the application using uWsgi, an app.wsgi file is provided. This command can be used to run it:

uwsgi --ini config/kinto.ini

uWsgi configuration can be tweaked in the ini file in the dedicated [uwsgi] section.

Here’s an example:

[uwsgi]
wsgi-file = app.wsgi
enable-threads = true
http-socket = 127.0.0.1:8000
processes =  3
master = true
module = kinto
harakiri = 120
uid = kinto
gid = kinto
virtualenv = .
lazy = true
lazy-apps = true
single-interpreter = true
buffer-size = 65535
post-buffering = 65535

To use a different ini file, the KINTO_INI environment variable should be present with a path to it.

Nginx as cache server

If Nginx is used as a reverse proxy, it can also act as a cache server by taking advantage of Kinto optional cache control response headers (forced in settings or set on collections).

A sample Nginx configuration could look like so:

proxy_cache_path /tmp/nginx levels=1:2 keys_zone=my_zone:100m inactive=200m;
proxy_cache_key "$scheme$request_method$host$request_uri$";

server {
    ...

    location / {
        proxy_cache my_zone;

        include proxy_params;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8888;
    }
}