Windows Service

The NATS server supports running as a Windows service. In fact, this is the recommended way of running NATS on Windows. There is currently no installer; users should use sc.exe to install the service:

  1. sc.exe create nats-server binPath= "%NATS_PATH%\nats-server.exe [nats-server flags]"
  2. sc.exe start nats-server

The above will create and start a nats-server service. Note that the nats-server flags should be provided when creating the service. This allows for running multiple NATS server configurations on a single Windows server by using a 1:1 service instance per installed NATS server service. Once the service is running, it can be controlled using sc.exe or nats-server.exe --signal:

  1. REM Reload server configuration
  2. nats-server.exe --signal reload
  4. REM Reopen log file for log rotation
  5. nats-server.exe --signal reopen
  7. REM Stop the server
  8. nats-server.exe --signal stop

The above commands will default to controlling the nats-server service. If the service is another name, it can be specified:

  1. nats-server.exe --signal stop=<service name>

For a complete list of signals, see process signaling.