Queue Worker Management in Production

Queue Workers Need Supervision

Queue workers are long-running processes that can fail, run out of memory, or become stuck. Proper supervision ensures reliability.

Supervisor Configuration

# /etc/supervisor/conf.d/laravel-worker.conf
[program:laravel-worker]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=php /var/www/app/artisan queue:work redis --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stopasgroup=true
killasgroup=true
user=www-data
numprocs=8
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/app/storage/logs/worker.log
stopwaitsecs=3600

Managing Supervisor

# Reload configuration
sudo supervisorctl reread
sudo supervisorctl update

# Manage workers
sudo supervisorctl start laravel-worker:*
sudo supervisorctl stop laravel-worker:*
sudo supervisorctl restart laravel-worker:*
sudo supervisorctl status

Horizon for Redis Queues

// config/horizon.php
'environments' => [
    'production' => [
        'supervisor-1' => [
            'connection' => 'redis',
            'queue' => ['high', 'default', 'low'],
            'balance' => 'auto',
            'minProcesses' => 3,
            'maxProcesses' => 10,
        ],
    ],
],

# Supervisor for Horizon
[program:horizon]
process_name=%(program_name)s
command=php /var/www/app/artisan horizon
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/app/storage/logs/horizon.log
stopwaitsecs=3600

Deployment Considerations

# After deployment, restart workers to pick up new code
php artisan queue:restart

# Horizon provides graceful termination
php artisan horizon:terminate

Monitoring Queue Health

• Queue depth (jobs waiting)
• Processing time
• Failed job count
• Worker memory usage

Conclusion

Queue workers need process supervision, proper configuration, and monitoring. Use Supervisor for basic setups, Horizon for advanced Redis queue management.