NATS

beginner

High-performance messaging system.

Overview

NATS is a lightweight, high-performance messaging system designed for cloud-native applications, microservices, and IoT environments. Originally developed by Derek Collison at Apcera, NATS has evolved into one of the fastest and simplest messaging platforms available, capable of handling millions of messages per second with minimal resource overhead. Unlike traditional message brokers that rely on complex routing mechanisms, NATS uses a simple subject-based pub/sub model that makes it incredibly fast and easy to understand. This Docker stack deploys a single NATS server with JetStream persistence enabled, providing both traditional fire-and-forget messaging and durable message streaming capabilities. The configuration includes the built-in monitoring interface, allowing you to observe message flow, connection statistics, and system health in real-time. JetStream adds persistent messaging, key-value stores, and object storage functionality on top of NATS' core pub/sub system, making it suitable for both high-throughput real-time scenarios and applications requiring message durability. This setup is ideal for developers building microservices architectures, IoT systems, or real-time applications who need reliable messaging without the complexity of heavier brokers like RabbitMQ or Kafka. NATS excels in scenarios requiring low latency, high throughput, and simple deployment, making it perfect for edge computing, gaming backends, financial trading systems, and distributed application coordination.

Key Features

Subject-based publish/subscribe messaging with wildcard support
JetStream persistent messaging with configurable retention policies
Request/reply pattern for synchronous communication between services
Queue groups for load balancing messages across multiple consumers
Built-in key-value store for distributed configuration and state management
Real-time monitoring dashboard accessible via web interface
Extremely low memory footprint starting at 64MB RAM usage
Native clustering support for high availability deployments

Common Use Cases

1Microservices communication in containerized applications
2IoT device messaging and telemetry data collection
3Real-time gaming backends for player state synchronization
4Financial trading systems requiring ultra-low latency messaging
5Edge computing scenarios with resource-constrained environments
6Event-driven architectures for distributed application coordination
7Chat applications and real-time collaboration tools

Prerequisites

Minimum 256MB RAM available for optimal NATS performance
Port 4222 available for NATS client connections
Port 8222 available for monitoring dashboard access
Basic understanding of publish/subscribe messaging patterns
NATS CLI client installed for testing and administration
Docker Compose 3.8+ for volume management support

For development & testing. Review security settings, change default credentials, and test thoroughly before production use. See Terms

docker-compose.yml

1services: 
2  nats: 
3    image: nats:latest
4    container_name: nats
5    restart: unless-stopped
6    command: "-js -m 8222"
7    ports: 
8      - "4222:4222"
9      - "8222:8222"
10    volumes: 
11      - nats_data:/data
12
13volumes: 
14  nats_data:

.env Template

.env

1# No additional config needed

Usage Notes

1Docs: https://docs.nats.io/
2Client connections on port 4222, monitoring at http://localhost:8222
3JetStream enabled (-js flag) for persistent messaging
4Pub/sub: nats pub subject 'message', nats sub subject
5Key-value store: nats kv add <bucket>, nats kv put <bucket> <key> <value>
6Extremely lightweight - single binary, minimal resource usage

Quick Start

terminal

1# 1. Create the compose file
2cat > docker-compose.yml << 'EOF'
3services:
4  nats:
5    image: nats:latest
6    container_name: nats
7    restart: unless-stopped
8    command: "-js -m 8222"
9    ports:
10      - "4222:4222"
11      - "8222:8222"
12    volumes:
13      - nats_data:/data
14
15volumes:
16  nats_data:
17EOF
18
19# 2. Create the .env file
20cat > .env << 'EOF'
21# No additional config needed
22EOF
23
24# 3. Start the services
25docker compose up -d
26
27# 4. View logs
28docker compose logs -f

One-Liner

Run this command to download and set up the recipe in one step:

terminal

1curl -fsSL https://docker.recipes/api/recipes/nats/run | bash

Troubleshooting

Connection refused on port 4222: Ensure the NATS container is fully started and port mapping is correct in docker-compose.yml
JetStream not available error: Verify the -js flag is present in the command configuration to enable JetStream functionality
Monitoring dashboard not accessible: Check that port 8222 is properly mapped and the -m 8222 flag is included in the startup command
Messages not persisting after restart: Confirm the nats_data volume is properly mounted to /data directory in the container
High memory usage with JetStream: Configure stream limits and retention policies to prevent unbounded message accumulation
Slow message delivery: Check subject naming patterns and avoid excessive wildcard subscriptions that can impact performance

Community Notes

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