How To Install and Configure HAproxy on CentOS 6

HAProxy is a free and open-source Linux application used for load balancing network traffic. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple. I will show you through the step by step installation of HAproxy on CentOS 6.x from source.

In this tutorial we will show you how to install and configuration of HAProxy on your CentOS 6 server.

Install and Configure HAproxy on CentOS 6

Step 1. First add yum repository your system.

HAProxy isn’t available in the default repositories for CentOS. In order for us to be able to install it, we need to either compile it from source (preferred) or add the EPEL repository to our server and install it using Yum.

#CentOS 6 – 32-bit
 rpm -Uvh http://mirror.overthewire.com.au/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

#CentOS 6 – 64-bit
 rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

Step 2. Install HAProxy using Yum.

 yum install haproxy

Step 3. Configuring HAProxy.

We have to modify the configuraion file of haproxy i.e. /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg as per our requirement. (Change this configuration as your network requirements). For more configuration details check this url.

#nano /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg global

log 127.0.0.1 local0
log 127.0.0.1 local1 debug
maxconn 45000 # Total Max Connections. This is dependent on ulimit
user haproxy
group haproxy
daemon

defaults
timeout server 86400000
timeout connect 86400000
timeout client 86400000
timeout queue 1000s

# Configuration for HTTP site
listen http_wpcademy 192.168.2.102:80
mode http
balance roundrobin # Load Balancing algorithm
option httpchk
option forwardfor
server server1 192.168.2.100:80 weight 1 maxconn 512 check
server server2 192.168.2.101:80 weight 1 maxconn 512 check

# Configuration for HTTPS site listen  
https_wpcademy 192.168.2.102:443
mode tcp
balance source# Load Balancing algorithm
reqadd X-Forwarded-Proto:\ http
server server1 192.168.2.100:443 weight 1 maxconn 512 check
server server2 192.168.2.101:443 weight 1 maxconn 512 check

listen stats 192.168.2.102:31337
mode http
option httpclose
balance roundrobin
stats uri /
stats realm Haproxy\ Statistics
stats refresh 5s
stats auth admin:passwd123

Step 4. Once you have configured HAProxy, its time to start the service.

service haproxy start
chkconfig haproxy on

Step 5. Now you will able to browse your applicaiton using the IP of the haproxy server. For haproxy Status dashboard you have to browse the URL: http://192.168.2.102:31337. It will ask you for the username and password. Use the username and password you defined on the configuraion file as “stats auth”.

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed HAProxy. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing HAProxy on CentOS 6 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official HAProxy web site.

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