Knowledge Base

Welcome to HAProxy’s extensive and ever-expanding knowledge base. Created by a team of experts including HAProxy’s Core Development Team; it covers a wide range of topics to help you achieve maximum potential.

Security

Route SSH Connections with HAProxy

Route SSH connections through HAProxy using the SSH ProxyCommand feature and SNI. Did you know that you can proxy SSH connections through HAProxy and route based on hostname? The advantage is that you can relay all SSH traffic through one public-facing server instead...

HAProxy and HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)

HAProxy provides an easy and straightforward way to add HTTPS to your website. As a load balancer positioned in front of your web servers, it can handle all of the encryption and decryption duties, offloading those tasks from your upstream servers. That's good because...

Redirect HTTP to HTTPS with HAProxy

Use the HAProxy load balancer to redirect users from HTTP to HTTPS automatically. For decades, our lives have become increasingly dependent on sending and receiving data from across the Internet. Now, with more people working, studying, and hanging with friends...

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Load Balancing/Routing

Announcing HAProxy Data Plane API 2.2

The HAProxy Data Plane API 2.2 lays the foundation for first-class service discovery and introduces native support for Consul. It also adds storage and file handling for SSL certificates, Map files, and SPOE configuration files. Register for our live webinar "What’s...

Circuit Breaking in HAProxy

  With HAProxy, you can implement a circuit breaker to protect services from widespread failure. Martin Fowler, who is famous for being one of the Gang of Four authors who wrote Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, hosts a website where...

Route SSH Connections with HAProxy

Route SSH connections through HAProxy using the SSH ProxyCommand feature and SNI. Did you know that you can proxy SSH connections through HAProxy and route based on hostname? The advantage is that you can relay all SSH traffic through one public-facing server instead...

HTTP Keep-Alive, Pipelining, Multiplexing and Connection Pooling

Persistent connections allow HAProxy to optimize resource usage, lower latency on both the client and server side, and support connection pooling.   HTTP is a layer 7 protocol that's transmitted over a TCP connection. It works in a client-server model and follows...

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SSL

Announcing HAProxy Data Plane API 2.2

The HAProxy Data Plane API 2.2 lays the foundation for first-class service discovery and introduces native support for Consul. It also adds storage and file handling for SSL certificates, Map files, and SPOE configuration files. Register for our live webinar "What’s...

Route SSH Connections with HAProxy

Route SSH connections through HAProxy using the SSH ProxyCommand feature and SNI. Did you know that you can proxy SSH connections through HAProxy and route based on hostname? The advantage is that you can relay all SSH traffic through one public-facing server instead...

Redirect HTTP to HTTPS with HAProxy

Use the HAProxy load balancer to redirect users from HTTP to HTTPS automatically. For decades, our lives have become increasingly dependent on sending and receiving data from across the Internet. Now, with more people working, studying, and hanging with friends...

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Microservices

Circuit Breaking in HAProxy

  With HAProxy, you can implement a circuit breaker to protect services from widespread failure. Martin Fowler, who is famous for being one of the Gang of Four authors who wrote Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, hosts a website where...

Accelerate Your APIs by Using the HAProxy Cache

HAProxy's cache helps boost API performance by serving saved messages to your users. The age of rendering most of a web page's contents on the server and then delivering it as a colossal HTML file is fading into the past. Modern web frameworks like Angular, React, and...

Dissecting the HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller

The new HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller provides a high-performance ingress for your Kubernetes-hosted applications. Register for the on-demand webinar "The HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller for High-Performance Ingress". Containers allow cross-functional...

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Performance

HTTP Keep-Alive, Pipelining, Multiplexing and Connection Pooling

Persistent connections allow HAProxy to optimize resource usage, lower latency on both the client and server side, and support connection pooling.   HTTP is a layer 7 protocol that's transmitted over a TCP connection. It works in a client-server model and follows...

Accelerate Your APIs by Using the HAProxy Cache

HAProxy's cache helps boost API performance by serving saved messages to your users. The age of rendering most of a web page's contents on the server and then delivering it as a colossal HTML file is fading into the past. Modern web frameworks like Angular, React, and...

Test Driving “Power of Two Random Choices” Load Balancing

The Power of Two Random Choices load-balancing algorithm has piqued some curiosity. In this blog post, we see how it stacks up against other modern-day algorithms available in HAProxy. Recently, I was asked twice about my opinion on supporting an algorithm known as...

HAProxy 1.9.2 Adds gRPC Support

HAProxy provides end-to-end proxying of HTTP/2 traffic. Use HAProxy to route, secure, and observe gRPC traffic over HTTP/2. Read on to learn more. HAProxy 1.9 introduced the Native HTTP Representation (HTX). Not only does this allow you to use HTTP/2 end-to-end, it...

Webinars

[Live Webinar] What’s New in the HAProxy Data Plane API 2.2

The webinar will be held on Tuesday, February 9th, 2021, at following times: US times: 12 noon EST, 11 AM CDT, 10 AM MDT, 9 AM PDT EU times: 6 PM CET, 5 PM GMT The HAProxy Data Plane API enables remote, dynamic configuration of your HAProxy load balancers.  Version...

[On-Demand Webinar] HAProxy 2.3 Feature Roundup

If you prefer watching the webinar in French, Baptiste Assmann hosted this webinar in French and it is available to watch on-demand as well. You can register here. HAProxy celebrates the release of version 2.3! As a technical release, this version of HAProxy optimizes...

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Basics

[On-Demand Webinar] HAProxy 2.3 Feature Roundup

If you prefer watching the webinar in French, Baptiste Assmann hosted this webinar in French and it is available to watch on-demand as well. You can register here. HAProxy celebrates the release of version 2.3! As a technical release, this version of HAProxy optimizes...

HAProxy Log Sampling

Log Sampling is a powerful feature introduced in HAProxy 2.0 that lets you define a percentage of your logs to create a representative view of your data allowing you to minimize your costs. Log files are the key to observability. They can provide helpful information...

Layer 4 and Layer 7 Proxy Mode

HAProxy can run in two different modes: TCP or HTTP. When operating in TCP mode, we say that it acts as a layer 4 proxy. In HTTP mode, we say that it acts as a layer 7 proxy. To understand the difference, you must first learn about the Open Systems Interconnection...

Serve Dynamic Custom Error Pages with HAProxy

Set up custom error pages in HAProxy to ensure consistent, branded messaging that supports any backend web stack. The memory is probably still fresh: You're shopping online at your favorite website, looking for something specific, you've got it narrowed down to two or...

Benchmarking

Test Driving “Power of Two Random Choices” Load Balancing

The Power of Two Random Choices load-balancing algorithm has piqued some curiosity. In this blog post, we see how it stacks up against other modern-day algorithms available in HAProxy. Recently, I was asked twice about my opinion on supporting an algorithm known as...

Benchmarking SSL Performance

Introduction The story Recently, there has been some attacks against website which aimed to steal user identity. In order to protect their users, major website owners had to find a solution. Unfortunately, we know that sometimes, improving security means downgrading...

Random Tips

Serve Dynamic Custom Error Pages with HAProxy

Set up custom error pages in HAProxy to ensure consistent, branded messaging that supports any backend web stack. The memory is probably still fresh: You're shopping online at your favorite website, looking for something specific, you've got it narrowed down to two or...

HAProxy and HTTP Errors 408 in Chrome

Lately, there was some discussions on HAProxy's mailing list about 408 errors printed in Chrome browsers. Origin of 408 errors 408 is the status code used by web servers or proxies when the client has not sent a whole HTTP request during a certain period of time. It...

Configure syslog-ng to Log Readable HTTP URL from HAProxy

These tips are provided by Exosec. Exosec provides a very good monitoring product called POM, based on Nagios with very strong value added such as very simple administration, application monitoring, etc... For some of their project, they use either HAProxy or the...

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Observability

HAProxy Log Sampling

Log Sampling is a powerful feature introduced in HAProxy 2.0 that lets you define a percentage of your logs to create a representative view of your data allowing you to minimize your costs. Log files are the key to observability. They can provide helpful information...

Tracing Requests Through HAProxy with AWS X-Ray

HAProxy integrates with AWS X-Ray to give you the best observability across your Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources, including your load balancer. Read on to learn how. There is a trend to move away from monolithic applications towards microservices. Microservices...

HAProxy Exposes a Prometheus Metrics Endpoint

HAProxy has added native support for Prometheus, allowing you to export metrics directly. Read on to learn more.   Metrics are a key aspect of observability, along with logging and tracing. They contain the data that inform you about the state of your systems,...

Binary Health Check with HAProxy 1.5: PHP-fpm/fastcgi Probe Example

Application Layer Health Checking Health checking is the ability to probe a server to ensure the service is up and running. This is one of the root feature of any load-balancer. One can probe servers and services at different layer of the OSI model: * ARP check (not...

DevOps

[On-Demand Webinar] Learn the HAProxy Data Plane API 2.0

People know HAProxy as the high-performance software load balancer that they can configure once, then trust to do the job, but it's also the best choice for dynamic environments where change is constant. For instance, HAProxy's configuration can be generated on the...

Announcing HAProxy Data Plane API 2.0

Find out more by registering for our webinar: “Learn the HAProxy Data Plane API 2.0“ Version 2.0 of the HAProxy Data Plane API brings some exciting enhancements that unlock the power of HAProxy's flexible configuration and its runtime capabilities. The HAProxy Data...

Programmatic HAProxy Configuration Using the Data Plane API

In his HAProxyConf 2019 presentation, Chad Lavoie (Director of Support, HAProxy Technologies) describes how to get started and how to build tools that integrate with the API. He demonstrates how to configure a frontend and backend in HAProxy, and then how to modify a...

Kubernetes

Service Discovery

Announcing HAProxy Data Plane API 2.2

The HAProxy Data Plane API 2.2 lays the foundation for first-class service discovery and introduces native support for Consul. It also adds storage and file handling for SSL certificates, Map files, and SPOE configuration files. Register for our live webinar "What’s...

HAProxy on Docker Swarm: Load Balancing and DNS Service Discovery

Use HAProxy to add routing, load balancing, and DNS service discovery to Docker Swarm. Docker Swarm lets you expand beyond hosting Docker containers on a single machine. It oversees a cluster of servers and manages which to deploy a container to, depending on each...

DNS for Service Discovery in HAProxy

HAProxy 1.8 and newer allows you to use DNS service discovery to detect server changes and automatically apply them to your configuration. HAProxy is a mature, high-performance software component that’s been reliably serving the load balancing and ADC markets for over...

HAProxy and Consul with DNS for Service Discovery

In this blog post we will show you a zero-touch method for integrating HAProxy with Consul by using DNS for service discovery available in HAProxy 1.8. HAProxy is the most widely used software load balancer in the world, well known for being extremely fast and...

Cloud

HAProxy Enterprise Offers SAML-based Single Sign-on

HAProxy Enterprise handles SAML single sign-on for your applications and integrates with identity providers like Azure Active Directory. Single sign-on (SSO) is such a familiar convenience for companies that it's easy to forget how powerful it is. When employees...

Building Blocks of a Modern Proxy

A major outcome of IT/Ops evolution is realizing the importance of a reverse proxy, such as HAProxy, in achieving modern application delivery. This is the first post in a series about HAProxy's role in building a modern systems architecture that relies on cloud-native...

Tracing Requests Through HAProxy with AWS X-Ray

HAProxy integrates with AWS X-Ray to give you the best observability across your Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources, including your load balancer. Read on to learn how. There is a trend to move away from monolithic applications towards microservices. Microservices...

LUA

Enabling CORS in HAProxy

The HAProxy Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) Lua module streamlines adding CORS to your APIs. What is CORS? Read on to learn more.It doesn't matter whether you're using Angular, React, Vue or simple, vanilla JavaScript. You're guaranteed to need to fetch or...

5 Ways to Extend HAProxy with Lua

Use Lua to add fetches, converters, actions, services and tasks to HAProxy. Did you know that HAProxy embeds the Lua scripting language, which you can use to add new functionality? HAProxy features an extremely powerful and flexible configuration language and gives...

Let’s Encrypt (ACMEv2) for HAProxy

HAProxy Technologies is proud to announce the availability of an integrated Let’s Encrypt ACMEv2 Lua client for HAProxy and HAProxy Enterprise (HAPEE). HAProxy Enterprise comes bundled with Lua support in a precompiled binary conveniently distributed using your Linux...

HAProxy 1.6-Dev1 and LUA

HAProxy 1.6-dev1 Yesterday, Willy has released HAProxy 1.6-dev1: ANNOUNCE HAProxy 1.6-dev1. This version contains many new features and core improvements. Amongst the new features, one is LUA, contributed by Thierry (HAProxy Technologies developer). NOTE: We invite...

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