HAProxy
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,[2] reverse proxy) for TCP and HTTP-based applications that spreads requests across multiple servers.[3] It is written in C[4] and has a reputation for being fast and efficient (in terms of processor and memory usage).[5]
| Original author(s) | Willy Tarreau |
|---|---|
| Initial release | December 16, 2001; 22 years ago (2001-12-16) |
| Stable release | |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris (8/9/10), AIX (5.1–5.3), macOS, Cygwin |
| License | GNU General Public License Version 2 |
| Website | www |
HAProxy is used by a number of high-profile websites including GoDaddy, GitHub, Bitbucket,[6] Stack Overflow,[7] Reddit, Slack,[8] Speedtest.net, Tumblr, Twitter[9][10] and Tuenti[11] and is used in the OpsWorks product from Amazon Web Services.[12]
HAProxy was written in 2000[13] by Willy Tarreau,[14] a core contributor to the Linux kernel,[15] who still maintains the project.
In 2013, the company HAProxy Technologies, LLC was created.[citation needed] The company provides a commercial offering, HAProxy Enterprise and appliance-based application-delivery controllers named ALOHA.
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[16] support on both sides
- HTTP/3[17] support
- WebSocket (RFC6455 and RFC8441)
- UDP/TCP Syslog load-balancing and forwarding/transcribing (RFC3164 and RFC5424)
- Event-driven Multithreaded architecture
- Hitless reloads[18]
- gRPC Support[19]
- 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
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.[20]
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.[21]
HAProxy has had the following version releases:[22]
| Version | Release date | End of life |
|---|---|---|
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.0 | 2001-12-16 | 2001-12-30 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.1 | 2002-03-10 | 2006-01-29 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.2 | 2003-11-09 | 2011-08-06 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.3 | 2006-06-29 | 2016-03-14 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.4 | 2010-02-26 | 2018-02-08 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.5 | 2014-06-19 | 2020-01-10 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.6 | 2015-10-13 | 2020-Q4 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.7 | 2016-11-25 | 2021-Q4 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.8 LTS | 2017-11-26 | 2022-Q4 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 1.9 | 2018-12-19 | 2020-Q2 |
| Older version, yet still maintained: 2.0 LTS | 2019-06-16 | 2024-Q2 (critical fixes only) |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 2.1 | 2019-11-25 | 2021-Q1 |
| Older version, yet still maintained: 2.2 LTS | 2020-07-07 | 2025-Q2 (critical fixes only) |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 2.3 | 2020-11-05 | 2022-Q1 |
| Older version, yet still maintained: 2.4 LTS | 2021-05-14 | 2026-Q2 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 2.5 | 2021-11-23 | 2023-Q1 |
| Older version, yet still maintained: 2.6 LTS | 2022-05-31 | 2027-Q2 |
| Old version, no longer maintained: 2.7 | 2022-12-01 | 2024-Q1 |
| Older version, yet still maintained: 2.8 LTS | 2023-05-31 | 2028-Q2 |
| Current stable version: 2.9 | 2023-12-05 | 2025-Q1 |
Legend: Old version Older version, still maintained Current stable version Latest preview version Future release | ||
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.[23] 64-core ARM servers were shown to reach 2 million requests per second and 100 Gbit/s.[24]
- "Release 2.9.0". 5 December 2023. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
- "MySQL Load Balancing with HAProxy". Severalnines AB. 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
- "HAProxy on Freecode". Retrieved 5 April 2013.
- "Nuts & Bolts: HAproxy". Retrieved 8 April 2013.
- "The inner guts of Bitbucket". YouTube. Retrieved 26 February 2015.
- "What it takes to run Stack Overflow". Retrieved 22 November 2013.
- "All Hands on Deck". Slack Engineering. 29 June 2020. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
- "HAProxy: they use it!". Retrieved 5 April 2013.
- "List of sites using HAProxy". Archived from the original on 10 June 2013. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
- "HAProxy layer - AWS Opsworks". Retrieved 5 April 2013.
- "HAProxy: design choices and history". Retrieved 5 April 2013.
- "Willy Tarreau: About me". Retrieved 5 April 2013.
- "LKML: Willy Tarreau: [ANNOUNCE] Linux 2.4.37.11". Retrieved 5 April 2013.
- Corbett, Daniel (2018-12-19). "HAProxy 1.9 Has Arrived". HAProxy Technologies. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
- Ramirez, Nick (2022-05-31). "Announcing HAProxy 2.6". HAProxy Technologies. Retrieved 2023-07-30.
- Mhedhbi, Moemen (2018-05-31). "Hitless Reloads / Hot Restarts with HAProxy!". HAProxy Technologies. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
- Ramirez, Nick (2019-01-16). "HAProxy 1.9.2 Adds gRPC Support". HAProxy Technologies. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
- "HAProxy Technologies Announces Improvements to Performance, Management, and Security for Enterprises" (Press release). 2 May 2018. Retrieved 23 Oct 2018.
- "ALOHA Hardware Appliance Application Delivery Controller". Retrieved 23 Oct 2018.