HAProxy is a free HTTP/TCP high availability load balancer and proxy server. It spreads requests among multiple servers to mitigate issues resulting from single server failure. HA Proxy is used by a number of high-profile websites including GitHub, Bitbucket, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter and Tuenti and is used in the OpsWorks product from Amazon Web Services.
Install HAProxy on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
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 and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation HAProxy on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.
Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Network Details.
Below is our network server. There are 3 web servers running with Apache2 and listening on port 80 and one HAProxy server:
Web Server Details:
Server 1: web1.wpcademy.com 192.168.1.101 Server 2: web2.wpcademy.com 192.168.1.102 Server 3: web3.wpcademy.com 192.168.1.103 HAProxy Server: HAProxy: haproxy 192.168.1.16
Step 3. Installing HAProxy.
Now install HAProxy with the following command:
apt-get -y install haproxy
After the installation you can double check the installed version number with the following:
haproxy -v
Step 4. 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 /dev/log local0
log /dev/log local1 notice
chroot /var/lib/haproxy
stats socket /run/haproxy/admin.sock mode 660 level admin
stats timeout 30s
user haproxy
group haproxy
daemon
# Default SSL material locations
ca-base /etc/ssl/certs
crt-base /etc/ssl/private
# Default ciphers to use on SSL-enabled listening sockets.
# For more information, see ciphers(1SSL). This list is from:
# https://hynek.me/articles/hardening-your-web-servers-ssl-ciphers/
ssl-default-bind-ciphers ECDH+AESGCM:DH+AESGCM:ECDH+AES256::RSA+AES:RSA+3DES:!aNULL:!MD5:!DSS
ssl-default-bind-options no-sslv3
defaults
log global
mode http
option httplog
option dontlognull
timeout connect 5000
timeout client 50000
timeout server 50000
errorfile 400 /etc/haproxy/errors/400.http
errorfile 403 /etc/haproxy/errors/403.http
errorfile 408 /etc/haproxy/errors/408.http
errorfile 500 /etc/haproxy/errors/500.http
errorfile 502 /etc/haproxy/errors/502.http
errorfile 503 /etc/haproxy/errors/503.http
errorfile 504 /etc/haproxy/errors/504.http
frontend Local_Server
bind 192.168.1.16:80
mode http
default_backend My_Web_Servers
backend My_Web_Servers
mode http
balance roundrobin
option forwardfor
http-request set-header X-Forwarded-Port %[dst_port]
http-request add-header X-Forwarded-Proto https if { ssl_fc }
option httpchk HEAD / HTTP/1.1rnHost:localhost
server web1.wpcademy.com 192.168.1.101:80
server web2.wpcademy.com 192.168.1.102:80
server web3.wpcademy.com192.168.1.103:80
listen stats *:1936
stats enable
stats hide-version
stats refresh 30s
stats show-node
stats auth username:password
stats uri /stats
Since you have done with all necessary configurations for proxy server, verify configuration file before restarting service using following command:
haproxy -c -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg
If above command return output as “configuration file is valid” then restart HAProxy service:
systemctl restart haproxy
Step 5. Accessing HAProxy.
Open your favorite browser and access port 80 on ip 192.168.0.16 (as configured above) in web browser and hit refresh. You will see that HAProxy is sending requests to backend server one by one (as per round robin algorithm).
Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed HAProxy. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing HAProxy load balancing on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official HAProxy web site.
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