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I'm quite impressed with HAProxy. It takes a little effort to fully understand the configuration file format (hint: you've got to read the documentation, not j
by tpmx 3y ago
I'm quite impressed with HAProxy.
It takes a little effort to fully understand the configuration file format (hint: you've got to read the documentation, not just look at examples to fully grok it), but it's so worth it, IMO.
It's also a nice treat to have the founder and technical leader (Willy Tarreau) of the HAProxy company being so active in the community, so many years later (the initital release was in 2001). I regularly see him answering e.g. newbie questions.
(HAProxy docs: https://docs.haproxy.org/ https://docs.haproxy.org/ - pick 2.8/LTS)
- exabrial 3y agoIt's become my swiss army knife of TCP. I nearly always terminate TCP first with haproxy "out of process" of whatever, then have it proxy over a unix socket to "whatever". This allows an immense amount of flexibility, from being able to "wiretap" whats going on in the real world, to default error pages, alarms, monitoring, handling CORS... tons of uses.
- tpmx 3y agoPlease write a blog post about this and submit it to HN!
- scns 3y agoThat is some very well written documentation IMHO.
- chasingtheflow 3y agoCan’t seem to read it on mobile.
- rrrix1 3y agoYou probably don't want to. Usually it needs at least a browser window, an editor and maybe an open TTY. haproxy.cfg can be ... tricky.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bkallus 3y agoI had the privilege of reporting a few bugs in HAProxy in the last few months. Willy's a real treasure; he's friendly and knowledgeable, and he clearly cares a ton about HAProxy even after 22 years of development.
- chaps 3y agoAgreed. Haproxy is an absolute wonder compared to similar systems. It all just feels so much cleaner, thought out, and built from the ground up for many different use cases. It very much has a feel that reminds me a lot of the spirit of sqlite.
- tpmx 3y agoYeah. Stringency and rigor are words that come to mind.
- andyfleming 3y agoHow does it compare with Caddy?
- superq 3y agoCaddy is a bit quick and dirty, rapidly-developing, with neat plugins but hard to configure for more complex scenarios and too light on the docs (IMO). HA Proxy is robust, comprehensive, mature, and bulletproof. It's basically boring because it works so well. If you have to choose only one to learn, choose HA Proxy.
- frankjr 3y agoI wanted to try it out just now but hit a roadblock immediately - it cannot automatically obtain and maintain TLS certificates. You have to use an external client (e.g. acme.sh), set up a cron to check/renew them, and poke HAProxy to reload them if necessary. I'm way past doing this in 2023. https://www.haproxy.com/blog/haproxy-and-let-s-encrypt https://www.haproxy.com/blog/haproxy-and-let-s-encrypt https://github.com/haproxy/haproxy/issues/1864 https://github.com/haproxy/haproxy/issues/1864
- nickramirez 3y agoIf getting Let's Encrypt to work with HAProxy is your only struggle, you'll soon overcome it and be loving HAProxy. And there are multiple ways to set up Let's Encrypt, if you don't want to use acme.sh. For example, you could use certbot. There are blog posts that cover that pretty well.