haproxy - sinherle/Recipes GitHub Wiki

Building HAProxy

Below versions of HAProxy are available in respective distributions at the time of this recipe creation:

  • Ubuntu 16.04 has 1.6.3

HAProxy version 1.6.5 has been successfully built and tested for Linux on z Systems. The following instructions can be used for RHEL 6.6/7.1 and SLES 11/12 and Ubuntu 16.04

General Notes: i) When following the steps below please use a standard permission user unless otherwise specified.

ii) A directory /<source_root>/ will be referred to in these instructions, this is a temporary writeable directory anywhere you'd like to place it.

Downloading, Building and Installing HAProxy

  1. Install the build dependencies

    (RHEL 6.6/7.1)

    sudo yum install  wget tar make  gcc

    (SLES 11/12)

    sudo zypper install  wget tar make  gcc

    (Ubuntu 16.04)

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install  wget tar make  gcc

  2. Download and unpack the required HAProxy source package

    cd /<source_root>/
wget http://www.haproxy.org/download/1.6/src/haproxy-1.6.5.tar.gz
tar xzvf haproxy-1.6.5.tar.gz
cd haproxy-1.6.5/

  3. Build and install HAProxy

    make TARGET=linux26
sudo make install

    Note: HAProxy will be installed in /usr/local/sbin. Depending upon user preferences and conventions, it may be necessary to either update PATH or create links to the executable files.

Simple Round-Robin Load Balancing Test

Adapted from Servers for Hackers

  1. Prepare a simple set of servers serving the same webpage

    For example, this simple node.js script will serve a small text page, including the serving address and port, on the machine's ports 9000-9002:

    var http = require('http');

function serve(ip, port)
{
    http.createServer(function (req, res)
    {
        res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
        res.write(JSON.stringify(req.headers));
        res.end("\nThere's no place like "+ip+":"+port+"\n");
    }).listen(port, ip);
    console.log('Server running at http://'+ip+':'+port+'/');
}

// Create three servers for
// the load balancer, listening on any
// network on the following three ports
serve('0.0.0.0', 9000);
serve('0.0.0.0', 9001);
serve('0.0.0.0', 9002);

    Note: To install Node.js, click here

  2. Create a file haproxy.config to serve as the configuration file for the test in the /<source_root>/ directory

    This is a simple round-robin configuration using three servers:

    global
    daemon
    maxconn 256

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

frontend http-in
    bind *:80
    default_backend neo4j

backend neo4j
    mode http
    balance roundrobin
    option forwardfor
    http-request set-header X-Forwarded-Port %[dst_port]
    option httpchk HEAD / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost:localhost
    server s1 127.0.0.1:9000 maxconn 32
    server s2 127.0.0.1:9001 maxconn 32
    server s3 127.0.0.1:9002 maxconn 32

listen admin
    bind *:8080
    stats enable

    Note: This assumes that the node.js script from step 1 is being run on the same machine, serving three almost-identical webpages on ports 9000-9002. If this is not the case, replace the declarations for s1-s3 accordingly.

  3. Run HAProxy with the provided configuration

    cd /<source_root>/
haproxy -f haproxy.config

Note: This will normally need to be done as root, or HAProxy will not have authority to access one or more ports, such as 80 and 8080.

  1. Navigate a web browser to the address of the server running HAProxy. The browser display the webpage from the first of the servers in haproxy.config. If the browser is refreshed, it should cycle through the provided servers in a round-robin fashion. If the node.js script from step 1 was used, the serving port number should change visibly with these refreshes.

References: