HAProxy
Free and open-source proxy software
HAProxy is a free and open source software that provides a high availability load balancer and proxy (forward proxy, reverse proxy) for TCP and HTTP-based applications that spreads requests across multiple servers. It is written in C and has a reputation for being fast and efficient (in terms of processor and memory usage).
HAProxy is used by a number of high-profile websites including GoDaddy, GitHub, Bitbucket, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Slack, Speedtest.net, Tumblr, Twitter and Tuenti and is used in the OpsWorks product from Amazon Web Services.
01History
HAProxy was written in 2000 by Willy Tarreau, a core contributor to the Linux kernel, who still maintains the project.
In 2013, the company HAProxy Technologies, LLC was created. The company provides a commercial offering, HAProxy Enterprise and appliance-based application-delivery controllers named ALOHA.
02Features
HAProxy has the following features:
- Layer 4 (TCP) and Layer 7 (HTTP) load balancing
- Multi-factor stickiness
- URL rewriting
- Rate limiting
- SSL/TLS termination proxy
- Gzip compression
- Caching
- PROXY Protocol support
- Scriptable multi-layer Health checking
- Connection and HTTP message logging
- HTTP/2 support on both sides
- HTTP/3 support
- WebSocket (RFC6455 and RFC8441)
- UDP/TCP Syslog load-balancing and forwarding/transcribing (RFC3164 and RFC5424)
- Event-driven Multithreaded architecture
- Hitless reloads
- gRPC Support
- Lua and SPOE Support
- API Support
- Layer 4/7 Retries
- Simplified circuit breaking
- Advanced debugging and tracing facilities
- Distributed stick-tables for stats collection and DoS mitigation
03HAProxy Community vs HAProxy Enterprise
HAProxy Enterprise Edition is an enterprise-class version of HAProxy that includes enterprise suite of add-ons, expert support, and professional services. It has some features backported from the HAProxy development branch.
04ALOHA
HAProxy Technologies’ ALOHA is a plug-and-play load-balancing appliance that can be deployed in any environment. ALOHA provides a graphical interface and a templating system that can be used to deploy and configure the appliance.
05Versions
HAProxy has had the following version releases:
| Version | Release date | End of life |
|---|---|---|
| Unsupported: 1.0 | 2001-12-16 | 2001-12-30 |
| Unsupported: 1.1 | 2002-03-10 | 2006-01-29 |
| Unsupported: 1.2 | 2003-11-09 | 2011-08-06 |
| Unsupported: 1.3 | 2006-06-29 | 2016-03-14 |
| Unsupported: 1.4 | 2010-02-26 | 2018-02-08 |
| Unsupported: 1.5 | 2014-06-19 | 2020-01-10 |
| Unsupported: 1.6 | 2015-10-13 | 2020-Q4 |
| Unsupported: 1.7 | 2016-11-25 | 2021-Q4 |
| Unsupported: 1.8 | 2017-11-26 | 2022-Q4 |
| Unsupported: 1.9 | 2018-12-19 | 2020-Q2 |
| Unsupported: 2.0 | 2019-06-16 | 2024-Q2 |
| Unsupported: 2.1 | 2019-11-25 | 2021-Q1 |
| Unsupported: 2.2 LTS | 2020-07-07 | 2025-Q2 |
| Unsupported: 2.3 | 2020-11-05 | 2022-Q1 |
| Unsupported: 2.4 LTS | 2021-05-14 | 2026-Q2 |
| Unsupported: 2.5 | 2021-11-23 | 2023-Q1 |
| Supported: 2.6 LTS | 2022-05-31 | 2027-Q2 (critical fixes only) |
| Unsupported: 2.7 | 2022-12-01 | 2024-Q1 |
| Supported: 2.8 LTS | 2023-05-31 | 2028-Q2 (critical fixes only) |
| Unsupported: 2.9 | 2023-12-05 | 2025-Q1 |
| Supported: 3.0 LTS | 2024-05-29 | 2029-Q2 |
| Unsupported: 3.1 | 2024-11-26 | 2026-Q1 |
| Supported: 3.2 LTS | 2025-05-28 | 2030-Q2 |
| Supported: 3.3 | 2025-11-26 | 2027-Q1 |
| Latest version: 3.4 LTS | 2026-06-03 | 2031-Q2 |
| Future version: 3.5-dev | 2026-Q4 | 2028-Q1 |
| Legend: Unsupported Supported Latest version Preview version Future version | ||
06Performance
Servers equipped with 6 to 8 cores generally achieve between 200,000 and 500,000 requests per second, and have no trouble saturating a 25 Gbit/s connection under Linux. 64-core ARM servers were shown to reach 2 million requests per second and 100 Gbit/s.
07Similar software
- Nginx
- Gearman
- Pound
- Vinyl Cache
- Envoy by CNCF
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “HAProxy”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Haproxy-logo.png by HAProxy Technologies, CC BY-SA 4.0
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