start_server#

start_server(*, server_address: str = '[::]:8080', server: Server | None = None, config: ServerConfig | None = None, strategy: Strategy | None = None, client_manager: ClientManager | None = None, grpc_max_message_length: int = 536870912, certificates: Tuple[bytes, bytes, bytes] | None = None) → History[source]#

Start a Flower server using the gRPC transport layer.

Parameters:

  • server_address (Optional[str]) – The IPv4 or IPv6 address of the server. Defaults to “[::]:8080”.

  • server (Optional[flwr.server.Server] (default: None)) – A server implementation, either flwr.server.Server or a subclass thereof. If no instance is provided, then start_server will create one.

  • config (Optional[ServerConfig] (default: None)) – Currently supported values are num_rounds (int, default: 1) and round_timeout in seconds (float, default: None).

  • strategy (Optional[flwr.server.Strategy] (default: None).) – An implementation of the abstract base class flwr.server.strategy.Strategy. If no strategy is provided, then start_server will use flwr.server.strategy.FedAvg.

  • client_manager (Optional[flwr.server.ClientManager] (default: None)) – An implementation of the abstract base class flwr.server.ClientManager. If no implementation is provided, then start_server will use flwr.server.client_manager.SimpleClientManager.

  • grpc_max_message_length (int (default: 536_870_912, this equals 512MB)) – The maximum length of gRPC messages that can be exchanged with the Flower clients. The default should be sufficient for most models. Users who train very large models might need to increase this value. Note that the Flower clients need to be started with the same value (see flwr.client.start_client), otherwise clients will not know about the increased limit and block larger messages.

  • certificates (Tuple[bytes, bytes, bytes] (default: None)) –

    Tuple containing root certificate, server certificate, and private key to start a secure SSL-enabled server. The tuple is expected to have three bytes elements in the following order:

    • CA certificate.

    • server certificate.

    • server private key.

Returns:

hist – Object containing training and evaluation metrics.

Return type:

flwr.server.history.History

Examples

Starting an insecure server:

>>> start_server()

Starting an SSL-enabled server:

>>> start_server(
>>>     certificates=(
>>>         Path("/crts/root.pem").read_bytes(),
>>>         Path("/crts/localhost.crt").read_bytes(),
>>>         Path("/crts/localhost.key").read_bytes()
>>>     )
>>> )