Dynamically Create and Destroy Servers with this Laravel Package

Oct 7, 2022 237 stars by Paul Redmond

Dynamically create and destroy servers

This package can help you start and stop servers when you need them. The prime use case is to spin up extra working servers that can help you process the workload on queues.

You can think of this as a sort of PHP based version of Kubernetes that has 5% of its features, but covers that 80% use case. For most PHP and Laravel developers, this package will also be easier to learn and use.

Typically, on your hosting provider, you would prepare a server snapshot, that will be used as a template when starting new servers.

After the package is configured, spinning up an extra servers is as easy as:

// typically, in a service provider

use Laravel\Horizon\WaitTimeCalculator;
use Spatie\DynamicServers\Facades\DynamicServers;
use Spatie\DynamicServers\Support\DynamicServersManager;

/*
 * The package will call the closure passed 
 * to `determineServerCount` every minute
 */
DynamicServers::determineServerCount(function(DynamicServersManager $servers) {
   /*
    * First, we'll calculate the number of servers needed. 
    * 
    * In this example, we will take a look at Horizon's 
    * reported waiting time. Of course, in your project you can 
    * calculate the number of servers needed however you want.    
    */
    $waitTimeInMinutes = app(WaitTimeCalculator::class)->calculate('default');
    $numberOfServersNeeded = round($waitTimeInMinutes / 10);

   /*
    * Next, we will pass the number of servers needed to the `ensure` method.
    * 
    * If there currently are less that that number of servers available,
    * the package will start new ones.
    * 
    * If there are currently more than that number of servers running,
    *  the package will stop a few servers.
    */
    $servers->ensure($numberOfServersNeeded);
});

Out of the box, the package supports UpCloud. You can create your own server provider to add support for your favourite hosting service.

Support us

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Documentation

All documentation is available on our documentation site.

Testing

composer test

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information on what has changed recently.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Security Vulnerabilities

Please review our security policy on how to report security vulnerabilities.

Credits

This idea behind this package was... spawned 🥁 by streams and a blog post by Jason McCreary on Spawning workers based on queue workload.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.