Observed Signal · Jul 3, 2026 · Technical Release · Source: DEV Community · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Neutral
Zero‑Downtime NestJS Deployments with GitLab and PM2
This is a hands‑on, production‑tested guide showing how to deploy a NestJS backend to a DigitalOcean Droplet with zero downtime. It covers Droplet initial setup (Ubuntu 24.04), installing Node.js v18 from the official binary, creating a non‑root deploy user, configuring Nginx as a reverse proxy and Certbot for SSL, and using PM2 in cluster mode with wait_ready/listen_timeout to enable graceful worker reloads. The article provides an ecosystem.config.js example, a GitLab CI/CD pipeline that rsyncs build artifacts and uses pm2 reload (or start) on the server, SSH key and GitLab variable setup, first‑time manual deploy steps, health checks, useful PM2/nginx commands, and a troubleshooting table of common issues and fixes encountered in a real production fintech deployment.
Provides a practical, production‑tested zero‑downtime deployment pattern for backend services (server setup, PM2 cluster reloads, and GitLab CI/CD orchestration) that engineering and operations teams can reuse to reduce downtime risk.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Target stack: DigitalOcean Droplet (Ubuntu 24.04), Node.js v18, PM2 (cluster mode), Nginx, GitLab CI/CD.
- Author recommends installing Node.js v18 directly from the official Node.js binary to avoid nodesource installing v20.
- ecosystem.config.js includes 'wait_ready: true' and 'listen_timeout: 8000' so PM2 waits for process.send('ready') before routing traffic to new workers.
- GitLab CI/CD pipeline builds artifacts, rsyncs a release/ folder to the Droplet, runs 'HUSKY=0 npm ci --omit=dev', and invokes 'pm2 reload ecosystem.config.js --env production --update-env' for zero‑downtime updates.
- Creates a non‑root 'deployer' user, configures SSH keys, and excludes .env from rsync so environment files persist across deployments.
Connected Companies & Entities
2 Entities mapped“* **CI/CD:** GitLab CI/CD...”
“* **Server:** DigitalOcean Droplet (Ubuntu 24.04)...”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
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