Processes

Overview

Processes are individual containerized services that make up your Tapitalee application. Each process represents a specific function or component of your application, such as a web server, API service, background worker, or database proxy. Processes provide fine-grained control over scaling, resource allocation, and deployment configuration.

Purpose and Benefits

Service Isolation: Separate concerns and scale components independently
Resource Control: Individual CPU, memory, and scaling configuration per service
Fault Isolation: Failures in one process don’t affect others
Independent Deployment: Deploy and update processes separately
Specialized Configuration: Different container configurations for different workloads
Horizontal Scaling: Scale each service based on its specific demands

On-Demand vs Spot Instances

Each process can run a mix of on-demand and spot instances, controlled by the demand_count and spot_count parameters respectively.

On-Demand Instances

On-demand instances are standard AWS ECS Fargate tasks that start reliably and remain running until you stop them. They are the safest choice for processes that require consistent availability.

Spot Instances

Spot instances run on spare AWS capacity and cost approximately one-third of the price of on-demand instances, making them a cost-effective option for workloads that can tolerate interruptions.

However, spot instances come with trade-offs:

Startup delays or failures: A spot instance may take longer than usual to start, or may fail to start at all if spare capacity is unavailable.
Forced shutdowns: AWS can reclaim spot capacity at any time, causing instances to be shut down unexpectedly.
Restart delays: After a forced shutdown, a spot instance may not be able to restart immediately — it must wait for spare capacity to become available again.

Spot instances are well-suited for background workers, batch jobs, or any process where occasional interruptions are acceptable.

Taking a Process Offline

You can set both demand_count and spot_count to 0, which stops all running instances and takes the process effectively offline. However, the preferred ways to stop a process are:

Set disabled=true via the CLI: tapit set process name=<process> disabled=true
Toggle the process Off in the Tapitalee web UI

Using the disabled flag (or the web UI toggle) is cleaner than setting counts to zero, as it preserves your previous instance counts so they can be restored when you re-enable the process.

CLI Usage

Create Process

tapit  create process name=process_name [memory|cpu|demand_count|spot_count|command|image|scale_count|scale_type|autoscaling_cpu_threshold|ephemeral_storage_gb]=value

Required Parameters

name: Process name (alphanumeric with hyphens)

Optional Parameters

memory: Memory allocation in GB (default: 0.5)
cpu: CPU allocation in vCPUs (default: 0.25)
demand_count: Number of on-demand instances
spot_count: Number of spot instances
command: Override container command
image: Specific container image to deploy for this process. When set, this overrides the normal deployment process — the process will always run this exact image rather than the image built during a deployment. Any image can be used, including external or public images (e.g. nginx:latest, public.ecr.aws/myorg/myapp:v1.2.3).
ephemeral_storage_gb: Ephemeral storage allocation in GB

Autoscaling Parameters

Autoscaling is available on Business and Enterprise plans only.

scale_count: Number of extra instances to add when scaling up
scale_type: Instance type to use when scaling up. One of none (default, disables autoscaling), spot, or demand
autoscaling_cpu_threshold: CPU utilization percentage to trigger autoscaling (e.g. 70)

Examples

# Basic web process
tapit create process name=default

# API service with more resources
tapit create process name=api memory=2.0 cpu=1.0 demand_count=3 spot_count=0

# Background worker
tapit create process name=worker memory=1.0 cpu=0.5 demand_count=1 spot_count=2 command="python worker.py"

# Microservice with custom image
tapit create process name=auth-service image=myapp/auth:latest memory=0.5 cpu=0.25 demand_count=2

Modify Process Configuration

tapit  set process [name=process_name] [memory|cpu|desired_count|spot_count|command|image|disabled|scale_count|scale_type|autoscaling_cpu_threshold|ephemeral_storage_gb]=value

Modifiable Parameters

name: Process to modify (required if multiple processes exist)
memory: Update memory allocation
cpu: Update CPU allocation
desired_count: Update on-demand instance count
spot_count: Update spot instance count
command: Update container command
image: Update the container image for this process. When set, this overrides the normal deployment process — the process will always run this exact image rather than the image built during a deployment. Any image can be used, including external or public images. Set to empty string to revert to the app’s default deployment image.
disabled: Disable (true) or enable (false) the process
ephemeral_storage_gb: Update ephemeral storage allocation in GB

Autoscaling Parameters

Autoscaling is available on Business and Enterprise plans only.

scale_count: Number of extra instances to add when scaling up
scale_type: Instance type to use when scaling up. One of none (default, disables autoscaling), spot, or demand
autoscaling_cpu_threshold: CPU utilization percentage to trigger autoscaling

Examples

# Scale up web process
tapit set process name=default desired_count=5

# Add more memory to worker
tapit set process name=worker memory=2.0

# Update command for background process
tapit set process name=scheduler command="python manage.py run_scheduler"

# Disable process temporarily
tapit set process name=worker disabled=true

# Re-enable process
tapit set process name=worker disabled=false

# Update to new image version
tapit set process name=api image=myapp/api:v2.1.0

Restart Process

tapit  restart process name=process_name

Performs a rolling restart of all instances of the specified process.

Examples

# Restart web servers
tapit restart process name=default

# Restart background workers
tapit restart process name=worker

Show Process Details

tapit  show process name=process_name

Displays comprehensive information about a specific process.

List Processes

tapit  list processes

Shows all processes in your application.

Delete Process

tapit  delete process name=process_name

Permanently removes a process and all its instances.

Examples

# Delete unused process
tapit delete process name=old-worker

# Clean up test process
tapit delete process name=test-api

Process Types and Patterns

Web Process

Handles HTTP requests and serves web traffic:

tapit create process name=default memory=1.0 cpu=0.5 demand_count=3 spot_count=1

Examples

Custom Commands

# Web server
tapit create process name=default command="npm start"

# Worker with specific script
tapit create process name=worker command="python -m celery worker -A app"

# Migration runner
tapit create process name=migrate command="python manage.py migrate" demand_count=1

Releases Tasks