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Introduction
What's New!
NATS 2.0
FAQ
NATS Concepts
What is NATS
Subject-Based Messaging
Publish-Subscribe
Request-Reply
Queue Groups
Acknowledgements
Sequence Numbers
Developing With NATS
Introduction
Connecting
Automatic Reconnections
Securing Connections
Receiving Messages
Sending Messages
Monitoring the Connection
Tutorials
NATS Server
Installing
Running
Clients
Flags
Configuration
Managing A NATS Server
NATS and Docker
NATS Tools
Introduction
mkpasswd
nk
nsc
nats-account-server
nats-top
nats-bench
NATS Streaming Concepts
Introduction
Relation to NATS
Client Connections
Channels
Store Interface
Store Encryption
Clustering
Fault Tolerance
Partitioning
Monitoring
Developing With NATS Streaming
Introduction
Connecting to NATS Streaming
Publishing to a Channel
Receiving Messages from a Channel
Durable Subscriptions
Queue Subscriptions
Acknowledgements
The Streaming Protocol
NATS Streaming Server
Important Changes
Installing
Running
Configuring
Process Signaling
Windows Service
Embedding NATS Streaming Server
Docker Swarm
NATS Protocol
Protocol Demo
Client Protocol
NATS Cluster Protocol
NATS on Kubernetes
Introduction
NATS Streaming Cluster with FT Mode
NATS and Prometheus Operator
NATS Cluster and Cert Manager
Securing a NATS Cluster with cfssl
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Introduction

The Importance of Messaging

Developing and deploying applications and services that communicate in distributed systems can be complex and difficult. However there are two basic patterns, request/reply or RPC for services, and event and data streams. A modern technology should provide features to make this easier, scalable, secure, location independent and observable.

Distributed Computing Needs of Today

A modern messaging system needs to support multiple communication patterns, be secure by default, support multiple qualities of service, and provide secure multi-tenancy for a truly shared infrastructure. A modern system needs to include:

  • Secure by default communications for microservices, edge platforms and devices

  • Secure multi-tenancy in a single distributed communication technology

  • Transparent location addressing and discovery

  • Resiliency with an emphasis on the overall health of the system

  • Ease of use for agile development, CI/CD, and operations, at scale

  • Highly scalable and performant with built-in load balancing and dynamic auto-scaling

  • Consistent identity and security mechanisms from edge devices to backend services

NATS

NATS was built to meet the distributed computing needs of today and tomorrow. NATS is simple and secure messaging made for developers and operators who want to spend more time developing modern applications and services than worrying about a distributed communication system.

  • Easy to use for developers and operators

  • High-Performance

  • Always on and available

  • Extremely lightweight

  • At Most Once and At Least Once Delivery

  • Support for Observable and Scalable Services and Event/Data Streams

  • Client support for over 30 different programming languages

  • Cloud Native, a CNCF project with Kubernetes and Prometheus integrations

Use Cases

NATS can run anywhere, from large servers and cloud instances, through edge gateways and even IoT devices. Use cases for NATS include:

  • Cloud Messaging

    • Services (microservices, service mesh)

    • Event/Data Streaming (observability, analytics, ML/AI)

  • Command and Control

    • IoT and Edge

    • Telemetry / Sensor Data / Command and Control

  • Augmenting or Replacing Legacy Messaging Systems

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What's New!
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Contents
The Importance of Messaging
Distributed Computing Needs of Today
NATS
Use Cases