Deploy Go/Golang REST Web API on production

Question

I am writing a backend web api for a mobile app. It should support HTTPS. Most of my experience in .NET, but for this one I want to use Go/Golang. I have a sample service ready, now I need to make sure that it is production ready. In .NET I will just use IIS, but I have no clue what would be a good approach for Go.
Should I have nginx as reverse proxy, or I better use FastCGI ? And how to make sure that my go app is up and will run on system reboot ? should I use upstart or something similar ?

Answer 1

I've used nginx as a reverse proxy for my Go projects. I've found that it's a lot easier to set up useful server settings such as TLS, compression, etc., in nginx rather than as a pure Go server.

Keeping it alive on server reboot is a more complicated question. I would suggest learning how to write a script/whatever for your server's init daemon and just doing it that way.

Answer 2

I've been using Nginx FastCGI with a Go webservice - they work well together. It's no harder to set up than HTTP reverse proxying - except for having to learn how to do it. The performance ought in principle to be a lot better, but I have no measurements to justify that hunch. My web service can work in both HTTP mode and FastCGI mode (one or other at a time), so I suppose I ought to do some benchmarking (note to self!).

If you want proper system startup (and you should), you need to learn how init scripts work. I sometimes cheat and start with an existing working script someone else wrote for a similar application and customise it to work with mine.