HAPROXY up and running in couple of minutes

Chandan PandeyAugust 8th, 2013Last Updated: August 7th, 2013

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I tried HAPROXY for my WEBAPP (Hosted on tomcat) -reason for using HAPROXY is that it also supports WEBSOCKETS and my current project uses websockets for server push.
As first step, I tested it with bare bone web application -wow, it’s just so easy, without any hiccups it was up and working in ~30 minutes. I used Linux box as no distribution for windows is available (One can use cygwin) -My previous poston same.

Download HAPROXY , I used version haproxy-1.4.24.
Untar it tar -xvf haproxy-1.4.24.tar.gz.
Build HAPROXY, command “make TARGET=linux26″ This is for centos58, Linux kernel 2.6. 26 in “TARGET=linux26″ indicates kernel for linux, if its 2.4 use TARGET=linux24″. As a side note, to know the kernel use uname -a on your linux box.
copy haproxy to /usr/sbin use “cp haproxy /usr/sbin/haproxy”
Create a config file say /etc/haproxy_chandan.cfg:

A mentioned on the HAPROXY site, this is the bare minimum configuration needed -Add it to the config file

global
    daemon
    maxconn 256

defaults
    mode http
    timeout connect 5000ms
    timeout client 50000ms
    timeout server 50000ms

frontend http-in
    bind *:80
    default_backend websockets_support

backend websockets_support
    server ws1 a.b.c.d:8888 maxconn 32
    server ws2 a.b.c.d:8080 maxconn 32

listen admin
    bind *:8080
    stats enable

Start HAPROXY, /usr/sbin/haproxy -f /etc/haproxy_chandan.cfg
As configured, requests will be handled at port 80 while the admin console for haproxy is 8080