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  • Welcome
  • Release Notes
    • What's New!
      • NATS 2.11
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      • NATS 2.2
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  • NATS Concepts
    • Overview
      • Compare NATS
    • What is NATS
      • Walkthrough Setup
    • Subject-Based Messaging
    • Core NATS
      • Publish-Subscribe
        • Pub/Sub Walkthrough
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        • Request-Reply Walkthrough
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    • JetStream
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        • Example
      • Consumers
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        • Object Store Walkthrough
      • Headers
    • Subject Mapping and Partitioning
    • NATS Service Infrastructure
      • NATS Adaptive Deployment Architectures
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  • Using NATS
    • NATS Tools
      • nats
        • nats bench
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        • Basics
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      • nats-top
        • Tutorial
    • Developing With NATS
      • Anatomy of a NATS application
      • Connecting
        • Connecting to the Default Server
        • Connecting to a Specific Server
        • Connecting to a Cluster
        • Connection Name
        • Authenticating with a User and Password
        • Authenticating with a Token
        • Authenticating with an NKey
        • Authenticating with a Credentials File
        • Encrypting Connections with TLS
        • Setting a Connect Timeout
        • Ping/Pong Protocol
        • Turning Off Echo'd Messages
        • Miscellaneous functionalities
        • Automatic Reconnections
          • Disabling Reconnect
          • Set the Number of Reconnect Attempts
          • Avoiding the Thundering Herd
          • Pausing Between Reconnect Attempts
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        • Monitoring the Connection
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      • Receiving Messages
        • Synchronous Subscriptions
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        • Unsubscribing
        • Unsubscribing After N Messages
        • Replying to a Message
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        • Queue Subscriptions
        • Draining Messages Before Disconnect
        • Receiving Structured Data
      • Sending Messages
        • Including a Reply Subject
        • Request-Reply Semantics
        • Caches, Flush and Ping
        • Sending Structured Data
      • Building Services
      • JetStream
        • JetStream Model Deep Dive
        • Managing Streams and consumers
        • Consumer Details
        • Publishing to Streams
        • Using the Key/Value Store
        • Using the Object Store
      • Tutorials
        • Advanced Connect and Custom Dialer in Go
    • Running Workloads on NATS
      • Getting Started
        • Installing Nex
        • Building a Service
        • Starting a Node
        • Deploying Services
        • Building a Function
        • Deploying Functions
      • Host Services
        • Javascript | V8
      • Nex Internals
        • Architecture Overview
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        • Nex Agent
        • No Sandbox Mode
        • Root File System
        • Control Interface
      • FAQ
  • Running a NATS service
    • Installing, running and deploying a NATS Server
      • Installing a NATS Server
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      • Windows Service
      • Flags
    • Environmental considerations
    • NATS and Docker
      • Tutorial
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      • JetStream
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    • NATS and Kubernetes
    • NATS Server Clients
    • Configuring NATS Server
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        • Configuration Management
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          • GitHub Actions
          • Kubernetes Controller
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        • Clustering Configuration
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          • Administration
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        • Configuration
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      • Securing NATS
        • Enabling TLS
        • Authentication
          • Tokens
          • Username/Password
          • TLS Authentication
            • TLS Authentication in clusters
          • NKeys
          • Authentication Timeout
          • Decentralized JWT Authentication/Authorization
            • Account lookup using Resolver
            • Memory Resolver Tutorial
            • Mixed Authentication/Authorization Setup
        • Authorization
        • Multi Tenancy using Accounts
        • OCSP Stapling
        • Auth Callout
      • Logging
      • Enabling Monitoring
      • MQTT
        • Configuration
      • Configuring Subject Mapping
      • System Events
        • System Events & Decentralized JWT Tutorial
      • WebSocket
        • Configuration
    • Managing and Monitoring your NATS Server Infrastructure
      • Monitoring
        • Monitoring JetStream
      • Managing JetStream
        • Account Information
        • Naming Streams, Consumers, and Accounts
        • Streams
        • Consumers
        • Data Replication
        • Disaster Recovery
        • Encryption at Rest
      • Managing JWT Security
        • In Depth JWT Guide
      • Upgrading a Cluster
      • Slow Consumers
      • Signals
      • Lame Duck Mode
      • Profiling
  • Reference
    • FAQ
    • NATS Protocols
      • Protocol Demo
      • Client Protocol
        • Developing a Client
      • NATS Cluster Protocol
      • JetStream wire API Reference
    • Roadmap
    • Contributing
  • Legacy
    • nats-account-server
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  • Running workloads without Firecracker
  • Production Use

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  1. Using NATS
  2. Running Workloads on NATS
  3. Nex Internals

No Sandbox Mode

Running workloads without Firecracker

Firecracker provides Nex operators with the confidence of being able to safely and securely run untrusted workloads. However, when developers are iterating over their application code and they want to deploy via Nex during that loop, requiring Firecracker can get in the way. Firecracker will only work on 64-bit Linux machines that have certain virtualization options enabled in the kernel.

Not only does this limit the developer workstations capable of using the sandbox, but there are a number of cloud virtual machine types that do not support this kind of virtualization.

To make this easier during development, and to allow Nex to manage workloads at the edge, on small devices, or even on Windows, you can run Nex in "no sandbox" mode.

The following is a configuration file that shows the use of the no_sandbox field. It might look a bit awkward to set no_sandbox to true, but this naming convention was chosen specifically to make it nearly impossible to accidentally launch a Nex node without a sandbox.

Example Configuration File

{
    "kernel_filepath": "/path/to/vmlinux-5.10",
    "rootfs_filepath": "/path/to/rootfs.ext4",
    "machine_pool_size": 1,
    "cni": {
        "network_name": "fcnet",
        "interface_name": "veth0"
    },
    "machine_template": {
        "vcpu_count": 1,
        "memsize_mib": 256
    },
    "tags": {
        "simple": "true"
    },
    "no_sandbox": true
}

NEX Agent

When running in no_sandbox mode, the nex node will run workloads directly on your machine. To do this, it spawns the nex-agent as a child process. To make sure the nex node can find the agent, you will need to ensure it is placed somewhere in your PATH.

Production Use

We strongly recommend the use of the Firecracker sandbox when running in production and suggest that unsafe mode should only be reserved for development and testing environments or those environments (e.g. macOS, Windows, edge devices) incapable of running Firecracker.

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Last updated 12 months ago

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