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I want to know how to deploy my node.js application (it uses Koa) on Windows 10, Windows server 2012 and newer.

In Internet I see old tips for using iisnode, but at the same time I see that people worry that developers no answer for many important questions (related with iisnode) and long time doesn't make changes to the iisnode code sources. :(

What is modern way to hosting node.js applications on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 and newer?

I would be grateful for link to step-by-step article.

Andrey Bushman
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  • To clarify, are you asking how to run a NodeJS-based web-server on Windows **for production workloads**? As opposed to running it for local development? – Dai Aug 05 '19 at 05:31
  • The cop-out answer is that the vast majority of production NodeJS deployments are on Linux or a BSD variant and they don't run on Windows - this explains why there isn't much documentation available. – Dai Aug 05 '19 at 05:32
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    @Dai, I want to know how can I deploy my `node.js` application on windows server (for production) and on windows 10 (as service, without console window opened, if it is possible). – Andrey Bushman Aug 05 '19 at 05:37

1 Answers1

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There are a few ways you can run NodeJS on Windows for production workloads.

It's important to first understand that Windows has built-in (kernel mode!) support for HTTP servers called HTTP.sys which IIS and other web-servers use to serve HTTP traffic rather than simply opening a listening socket on port 80 (this is how Microsoft's IIS beat the pants off Apache in the web-server benchmarks back in the late 1990s).

Your options are:

  • Expose NodeJS directly to port 80/443
    • This is the simplest approach though with many drawbacks. But provided you don't need to run different multiple applications and non-NodeJS code on the server then this is a valid option. Just remember to disable HTTP.sys first.
  • Run NodeJS behind HTTP.sys
    • The author of the iisnode library also wrote another lib called httpsys for NodeJS (as running behind IIS uses many of the same techniques as running behind HTTP.sys): https://github.com/tjanczuk/httpsys - unfortunately it's out of date, but there really isn't much code to it so you can probably hack it yourself to work with the latest versions of Node. This is one of the points of open-source! ("Don't complain, fix it!")

  • Run NodeJS behind IIS with Microsoft's fork of iisnode:

    • While the original iisnode is abandoned, Microsoft actually took over ownership and forked it to https://github.com/Azure/iisnode which does seem to be actively maintained - and Microsoft has a vested interest in maintaining it because Microsoft wants to make money from the world running its apps on Azure regardless of whatever language, platform or OS they're using.

  • Run NodeJS behind an nginx port for Windows

  • One last option (and probably the best for your situation) is to run NodeJS on Windows as-is and use IIS' Application Request Routing (ARR) feature:

Dai
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    This is an excellent breakdown of the modern options for running NodeJS in production on Windows. Most stuff I've found it outdated or not for Windows. Thank you! – dmikester1 Jan 29 '20 at 16:25
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    Also wondering if PM2 fits into this list somewhere. https://blog.cloudboost.io/nodejs-pm2-startup-on-windows-db0906328d75 – dmikester1 Jan 29 '20 at 16:27
  • Woops, nevermind that last comment about PM2, I see that the last instructions link you posted actually uses PM2. Perfect! – dmikester1 Jan 29 '20 at 16:55
  • Azure/IISNode - latest release dates are 2017, so I would retract that "actively" maintained, as this doesn't apply any longer :) – HellBaby Oct 05 '22 at 05:59