Which production server to use for Python applications in Cloud Run?

Question

I want to use GCP cloud run as a technology to run my python flask app, so I have to dockerize it. Most of examples I've seen are either using built in flask server or gunicorn server as an ENTRYPOINT, which gives a warning on a console, that it shouldn't be used on production.

My question is: does it matter with a platform like GCP cloud run which server do I use to run that code? What would be the performance impact of that choice?

Answer 1

You want gunicorn, and you'll need to configure it correctly.

1. Typically in these setups there will be an external HTTP server proxying requests to your server. So it matters rather less which webserver you're using on the backend, because it's not directly exposed.

2. That being said, the built-in Flask webserver isn't ideal, so gunicorn would probably be better. You will need to tweak Gunicorn's settings slightly to work correctly in container: logging, heartbeat setting, and parallelism.

See https://pythonspeed.com/articles/gunicorn-in-docker/ for details.