Many people use forever https://github.com/nodejitsu/forever , which has become pretty much industry standard. If you are on Ubuntu, you can also use init scripts ( google 'ubuntu upstart' ), that will do much the same thing, and are guaranteed to if the server ever gets restarted. Here is my upstart script for example https://gist.github.com/qb…

gistfile1.txt

#!upstart                                                                                                        
description "MyApp"
author      "MyApp by charlie"

env PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

respawn
start on runlevel [23]
stop on shutdown

script
    export DISPLAY=:1
    export NODE_ENV=production
    exec authbind node /opt/deploy/myapp/app.js >> /var/log/myapp.log
end script