App Configuration (fly.toml)

The Fly platform uses fly.toml to configure applications for deployment. Configuration of builds, environment variables, internet-exposed services, disk mounts and release commands go here.

TOML is a simple configuration file format. Here's a useful introduction on its syntax.

You don't need to create a fly.toml file by hand. Running flyctl launch will create a fly.toml file for you. You can also generate one from an existing app by running flyctl config save.

VSCode users: Install the Even Better TOML extension for automatic fly.toml validation and hints drawn from this documentation.

Fly.toml - Line by Line

The app Name

The first key/value in any fly.toml file is the application name. This will also be used to create the host name that the application will use by default. For example:

app = "restless-fire-6276"

Whenever flyctl is run, it will look for a fly.toml file in the current directory and use the application name in that file. This behavior can be overridden by using the -a flag to set the application name, or on some commands (such as deploy) by using a -c flag to point to a different fly.toml file.

Runtime Options

Various options are available to control the life-cycle of a running application. These are optional and can be placed at the top level of the fly.toml file:

kill_signal Option

When shutting down a Fly app instance, by default, Fly sends a SIGINT signal to the running process. Typically this triggers a hard shutdown option on most applications. The kill_signal option allows you to change what signal is sent so that you can trigger a softer, less disruptive shutdown. Options are SIGINT (The default), SIGTERM, SIGQUIT, SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2, SIGKILL, or SIGSTOP. For example, to set the kill signal to SIGTERM, you would add:

kill_signal = "SIGTERM"

kill_timeout Option

When shutting down a Fly app instance, by default, after sending a signal, Fly gives an app instance five seconds to close down before being killed. Depending on the type of VM, this timeout can be adjusted. Shared VMs can extend it to 300 seconds (five minutes). Dedicated VMs can extend the timeout to 86400 seconds (twenty-four hours). To set the timeout to two minutes, you would add:

kill_timeout = 120

The build Section

The optional build section contains key/values concerned with how the application should be built. You can read more about builders in Builders and Fly

Builder

[build]
  builder = "paketobuildpacks/builder:base"
  buildpacks = ["gcr.io/paketo-buildpacks/nodejs"]

The builder "builder" uses CNB Buildpacks and Builders to create the application image. These are third party toolkits which can use Heroku compatible build processes or other tools. The tooling is all managed by the buildpacks and buildpacks are assembled into CNB Builders - images complete with the buildpacks and OS to run the tool chains.

In our example above, the builder is being set to use Paketo's all-purpose builder with the NodeJS buildpack.

Specify a Docker Image

[build]
  image = "flyio/hellofly:latest"

The image builder is used when you want to immediately deploy an existing public image. When deployed, there will be no build process; the image will be prepared and uploaded to the Fly infrastructure as is. This option is useful if you already have a working Docker image you want to deploy on Fly or you want a well known Docker image from a repository to be run.

Specify a Dockerfile

[build]
  dockerfile = "Dockerfile.test"

dockerfile accepts a relative path to a Dockerfile. By default, flyctl looks for Dockerfile in the application root.

This option will not change the Docker context path, which is set to the project root directory by default. If you want the Dockerfile to use its containing directory as the context root, use fly deploy <directory>.

Specify a Multistage Docker Build Target

[build]
  build-target = "test"

If your Dockerfile has multiple stages, you can specify one as the target for deployment. The target stage must have a CMD or ENTRYPOINT set.

Specify Docker Build Arguments

You can pass build-time arguments to both Dockerfile and Buildpack builds using the [build.args] sub-section:

[build.args]
  USER="plugh"
  MODE="production"

You can also pass build arguments to flyctl deploy using --build-arg. Command line args take priority over args with the same name in fly.toml.

Note that build arguments are not available in the runtime container. If you need build information at runtime - like a Git revision - store it in a file at build time, like:

RUN echo $GIT_REVISION > REVISION

Likewise, application environment variables and secrets are not available to builds.

The deploy Section

This section configures deployment-related settings such as the release command or deployment strategy.

Run One-off Commands Before Releasing a Deployment

[deploy]
  release_command = "bundle exec rails db:migrate"

This command runs in a temporary VM - using the successfully built release - before that release is deployed. This is useful for running database migrations.

The temporary VM has full access to the network, environment variables and secrets, but not to persistent volumes. Changes made to the filesystem on the temporary VM will not be retained or deployed. If you need to modify persistent volumes or configure your application, consider making use of CMD or ENTRYPOINT in your Dockerfile.

A non-zero exit status from this command will stop the deployment. fly deploy will display logs from the command. Logs are available via fly logs as well.

To ensure the command runs in a specific region - say dfw - set PRIMARY_REGION = 'dfw' on in your application environment in fly.toml or with fly deploy -e PRIMARY_REGION=dfw. Setting PRIMARY_REGION is important if when running database replicas in multiple regions.

The environment variable RELEASE_COMMAND=1 is set for you within the temporary release VM. This might be useful if you need to customize your Dockerfile ENTRYPOINT to behave differently within a release VM.

Picking a Deployment Strategy

[deploy]
  strategy = "bluegreen"

strategy controls the way a new release replaces the previous release. Different strategies offer trade-offs between downtime and reliability.

strategy may also be specified at deploy time with flyctl deploy --strategy.

The available strategies are:

canary: The default for apps without persistent volumes. canary will boot a single, new VM with the new release, verify its health, then proceed with a rolling restart strategy.

rolling: The default for apps with persistent volumes. One by one, each running VM is taken down and replaced by a new release VM. This is the default strategy for apps with volumes.

bluegreen: For every running VM, a new one is booted alongside it in the same region. Once all of the new VMs pass health checks, traffic gets migrated to new VMs. If your app is scaled to 2 or more VMs, this strategy can reduce deploy time by running tasks in parallel.

immediate: Replace all VMs with new releases immediately without waiting for health checks to pass. This is useful in emergency situations where you're confident about release health and can't wait for health checks.

Note: If max-per-region is set to 1, the default strategy is set to rolling. This happens because canary needs to temporarily run more than one VM to work correctly. The bluegreen strategy will behave similarly with max-per-region set to 1.

The env Variables Section

[env]
  LOG_LEVEL = "debug"
  RAILS_ENV = "production"
  S3_BUCKET = "my-app-production"

This optional section allows setting non-sensitive information as environment variables in the application's runtime environment.

For sensitive information, such as credentials or passwords, use the secrets CLI command.

Env variable names are strictly case-sensitive and cannot begin with FLY_ (as this could clash with the runtime environment). Env values can only be strings.

Secrets take precedence over env variables with the same name.

The statics Sections

When statics are set, requests under url_prefix that are present as files in guest_path will be delivered directly to clients, bypassing your web server. These assets are extracted from your Docker image and delivered directly from our proxy on worker hosts.

[[statics]]
  guest_path = "/app/public"
  url_prefix = "/public"

Each [[statics]] block maps a URL prefix to a path inside your container. You can have up to 10 mappings in an application.

The "guest path" --- the path inside your container where the files to serve are located --- can overlap with other static mappings; the URL prefix should not (so, two mappings to /public/foo and /public/bar are fine, but two mappings to /public are not).

Caveats

This feature should not be compared directly with a CDN, for the following reasons.

This feature does not exempt you from having to run a web service in your VM.

Statics will not find index.html at the root. The full path must be requested.

You can't set Cache-Control or any other headers on assets. If you need those, you'll need to deliver them from your application and set the relevant headers.

Assets are not delivered, by default, from all edge Fly regions. Rather, assets are delivered from the regions the application is deployed in.

statics does not honor symlinks. So, if /app/public in your container is actually a symlink to something like /app-39403/public, you'll want to use the absolute original path in your statics configuration.

The services Sections

The services sections configure the mapping of ports on the application to ports and services on the Fly platform. These mappings determine how connections to the application will be handled on their journey from the Fly edge network to running Fly applications.

You can have:

• No services section: The application has no mappings to the external internet - typically apps like databases that talk over 6PN private networking to other apps.
• One services section: One internal port mapped to the one or more external ports on the internet.
• Multiple services sections: Mapping multiple internal ports to multiple external ports.

The services section itself is a table of tables in TOML, so the section is delimited with double square brackets, like this:

[[services]]
  internal_port = 8080
  protocol = "tcp"

• internal_port : The port this service (and application) will use to communicate with clients. The default is 8080. We recommend applications use the default.
• protocol : The protocol that this service will use to communicate. Typically tcp for most applications, but can also be udp.

services.concurrency

The services concurrency sub-section configures how to measure load for an application to inform load balancing and scaling.

This section is a simple list of key/values, so the section is denoted with single square brackets like so:

  [services.concurrency]
    type = "connections"
    hard_limit = 25
    soft_limit = 20

type specifies what metric is used to determine when to scale up and down, or when a given instance should receieve more or less traffic (load balancing). The two supported values are connections and requests.

connections: Load balance and scale based on number of concurrent tcp connections. This is the default when unspecified. This is also the default when fly.toml is created with fly launch.

requests: Load balance and scale based on the number of http requests. This is recommended for web services, since multiple requests can be sent over a single tcp connection.

• hard_limit : When an application instance is at or over this number of concurrent connections or requests, the system will stop sending new traffic to that application instance. The system will bring up another instance if the auto scaling policy supports doing so.
• soft_limit : When an application instance is at or over this number of concurrent connections or requests, the system will deprioritize sending new traffic to that application instance and only send it to that application instance if all other instances are also at or above their soft_limit. The system will likely bring up another instance if the auto scaling policy for the application support doing so.

services.ports

For each external port you want to accept connections on, you will need a services.ports section. One for each port, the section is denoted by double square brackets like this:

  [[services.ports]]
    handlers = ["http"]
    port = 80
    force_https = true  # optional

This example defines an HTTP handler on port 80.

• handlers : An array of strings, each string selecting a handler process to terminate the connection with at the edge. Here, the "HTTP" handler will accept HTTP traffic and pass it on to the internal port of the application which we defined earlier.
• port : An integer representing the external port to listen on (ports 1-65535).
• force_https: A boolean which determines whether to enforce HTTP to HTTPS redirects.

You can have more than one services.ports sections. The default configuration, for example, contains two. We've already seen one above. The second one defines an external port 443 for secure connections, using the "tls" handler.

  [[services.ports]]
    handlers = ["tls", "http"]
    port = "443"

The details of how these handlers manage network traffic, and other handlers available, are detailed in the Network Services documentation.

For UDP applications make sure to bind the application to the same port as defined in the relevant services.ports section. For example, the configuration below will listen on port 5000 and the application will need to bind to fly-global-services:5000 to receive traffic. Leave handlers unset for UDP services.

[[services]]
  internal_port = 5000
  protocol = "udp"
  [[services.ports]]
    port = 5000

services.tcp_checks

When a service is running, the Fly platform checks up on it by connecting to a port. The services.tcp_checks section defines parameters for those checks. For example, the default tcp_checks look like this:

  [[services.tcp_checks]]
    grace_period = "1s"
    interval = "15s"
    restart_limit = 0
    timeout = "2s"

• grace_period: The time to wait after a VM starts before checking its health.
• interval: The time between connectivity checks.
• restart_limit: The number of consecutive TCP check failures to allow before attempting to restart the VM. The default is 0, which disables restarts based on failed TCP health checks.
• timeout: The maximum time a connection can take before being reported as failing its healthcheck.

Times are in milliseconds unless units are specified.

services.http_checks

Another way of checking a service is running is through HTTP checks as defined in the services.http_checks section. These checks are more thorough than tcp_checks as they require not just a connection but a successful HTTP status in response (i.e, 2xx). Here is an example of a services.http_checks section:

  [[services.http_checks]]
    interval = 10000
    grace_period = "5s"
    method = "get"
    path = "/"
    protocol = "http"
    restart_limit = 0
    timeout = 2000
    tls_skip_verify = false
    [services.http_checks.headers]

Roughly translated, this section says every ten seconds, perform a HTTP GET on the root path (e.g. http://appname.fly.dev/) looking for it to return a HTTP 200 status within two seconds. The parameters of a http_check are listed below.

• grace_period: The time to wait after a VM starts before checking its health.
• interval: The time in milliseconds between connectivity checks.
• method: The HTTP method to be used for the check.
• path: The path of the URL to be requested.
• protocol: The protocol to be used (http or https)
• restart_limit: The number of consecutive HTTP check failures to allow before attempting to restart the VM. The default is 0, which disables restarts based on failed HTTP health checks.
• timeout: The maximum time a connection can take before being reported as failing its healthcheck.
• tls_skip_verify: When true (and using HTTPS protocol) skip verifying the certificates sent by the server.
• services.http_checks.headers: This is a sub-section of services.http_checks. It uses the key/value pairs as a specification of header and header values that will get passed with the http_check call.

Times are in milliseconds unless units are specified.

Note: The services.http_checks section is optional and not generated in the default fly.toml file.

The mounts Section

This section supports the Volumes feature for persistent storage. The section has two settings; both are needed.

[mounts]
source="myapp_data"
destination="/data"

source

The source is a volume name that this app should mount. Any volume with this name, in the same region as the app and that isn't already mounted, may be mounted. A volume of this name must exist in some region for the application to deploy.

destination

The destination is directory where the source volume should be mounted on the running app.

The processes Section

The processes section allows you to run multiple processes. This way you can define one application, but run it multiple times.

Each application instance can be started with a different command, allowing you to re-use your code base for different tasks (web server, queue worker, etc).

To run multiple processes, you'll need a [processes] block containing a map of a name and command to start the application.

[processes]
web = "bundle exec rails server -b [::] -p 8080"
worker = "bundle exec sidekiqswarm"

Furthermore, you can "match" a specific process (or processes) to a services, mount, or statics configuration. For example:

[[services]]
  processes = ["web"] # this service only applies to the web process
  http_checks = []
  internal_port = 8080
  protocol = "tcp"
  script_checks = []

After configuring the processes, you'll need to scale them up with per-process commands. For example:

$ fly scale count web=2 worker=2

Per-process Commands

Some fly commands accept a process name as an argument. The following examples shows which:

• Change VM counts: fly scale count web=2 worker=1
• Change VM size: fly scale vm shared-cpu-1x --group worker
• Change regions: fly regions set iad --group worker

For a bit more context on the processes feature, you can read our community announcement.

The experimental Section

This section is for flags and feature settings which have yet to be promoted into the main configuration.

[experimental]
cmd = ["path/to/command", "arg1", "arg2"]
entrypoint = ["path/to/command", "arg1", "arg2"]

cmd

This overrides the CMD set by the Dockerfile. It should be specified as an array of strings, as seen in the example above.

entrypoint

This overrides the ENTRYPOINT set by the Dockerfile. It should be specified as an array of strings, as seen in the example above.