Use PM2 as a process manager

PM2 lets you run your nodejs scripts forever. In the event that your application crashes, PM2 will also restart it for you.

Install PM2 globally to manager your nodejs instances

npm install pm2 -g

Navigate to the directory in which your nodejs script resides and run the following command each time you want to start a nodejs instance to be monitored by pm2:

pm2 start server.js --name "app1"

Useful commands for monitoring the process

1. List all nodejs instances managed by pm2

   pm2 list

   
2. Stop a particular nodejs instance

   pm2 stop <instance named>

3. Delete a particular nodejs instance

   pm2 delete <instance name>

4. Restart a particular nodejs instance

   pm2 restart <instance name>

5. Monitoring all nodejs instances

   pm2 monit

   
6. Stop pm2

   pm2 kill

7. As opposed to restart, which kills and restarts the process, reload achieves a 0-second-downtime reload

   pm2 reload <instance name>

8. View logs

   pm2 logs <instance_name>