Effortless Simplicity That Delivers
What do you like best about the product?
The product stands out for its simplicity, both in terms of consideration and configuration. It is easy to understand and set up, making the overall experience straightforward.
What do you dislike about the product?
The deployments are stateless and diversified, which I find beneficial.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Session and context are important aspects to consider. They play a significant role in how the software functions and how users interact with it.
Reliable Load Balancing with Flexible Configuration
What do you like best about the product?
I really like the flexibility of HAProxy's configuration, which gives me the ability to tailor it precisely to my needs. This adaptability is crucial for handling diverse traffic requirements and optimizing performance. I also appreciate HAProxy's excellent performance and reliability, as it effectively handles my load balancing needs without any hitches, ensuring smooth and uninterrupted service availability. The precise routing rules are particularly beneficial, allowing for direct and efficient traffic management, which enhances the overall system efficiency. Additionally, the initial setup of HAProxy was easy, which made the transition into using this tool seamless and hassle-free. I also value its integration capabilities with Kubernetes, which allows for a unified and coherent workflow, boosting productivity and operational harmony.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use HAProxy for load balancing my applications, solving availability failovers. Its flexibility in configuration, performance, and precise routing enhances my system's reliability.
Reliable Traffic Management with Room for Monitoring Improvement
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate HAProxy's excellent ability to load balance and distribute traffic efficiently, which is essential for managing high-volume traffic environments. The software greatly assists by diverting traffic to various systems, ensuring optimal performance across the network. I have found the initial setup of HAProxy to be straightforward and user-friendly, with documentation providing valuable guidance. Being a long-term user, having implemented HAProxy for over a decade, I trust its reliability and effectiveness, and I continue to rely on its robust functionalities for my projects.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find the monitoring capabilities of HAProxy lacking, as I need help with visualizing the percentage of traffic distribution, and I wish there was a more intuitive way to manage traffic based on health checks. Additionally, the stats page could benefit from enhanced performance and features to make it more useful.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use HAProxy for efficient traffic routing and load balancing, effectively distributing loads across systems and aiding in diverting traffic. It helps my team handle different system requirements smoothly, although monitoring capabilities and stats page performance could be improved.
Good Software with Room for Improvement
What do you like best about the product?
Good software; provides a lot of features
What do you dislike about the product?
Knowledge gap; can be a bit hard understanding how to implement and use it
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
• Increase reliability and uptime
• Protect services from overload
• Terminate SSL/TLS
Outstanding Performance and Efficiency with Excellent Observability
What do you like best about the product?
Performance and efficiency, observability
What do you dislike about the product?
Steep learning curve and complex config management
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Load balancing and high availability
Customizable and Efficient Load Balancing
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate the custom configurations available in HAProxy, which allow me to add unique settings compared to other solutions. This ability to customize is particularly valuable as it enables adaptations that align closely with the specific needs of my setup. Even though the configurations can be advanced and somewhat complex, they provide a significant advantage in tailoring HAProxy to fit the organizational requirements. This customization capacity makes HAProxy a versatile and powerful tool in my work context.
What do you dislike about the product?
No point fir now
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
HAProxy helps select and direct requests to the proper node, improving control and traffic management across multiple databases.
Effortless Load Balancing with HAProxy
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate HAProxy for its reliable load balancing capabilities, which I've extensively utilized for over 12 years in production and numerous cloud environments. Its nature as a free, open-source solution adds to its appeal, particularly because it maintains low latency in complex environments. I find it incredibly easy to configure, resulting in a straightforward setup process, and am impressed by its robust capabilities that ensure high performance without frequent errors. This makes HAProxy highly dependable for balancing applications effectively. Personally, I've used it alongside tools like Keepalived, and although I don't use it exclusively, it remains a top choice for its seamless operational functionality.
What do you dislike about the product?
I can’t think of anything
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use HAProxy for reliable load balancing in web applications. It's easy to configure, low-latency, robust, and performs well without frequent errors, making it ideal for production environments.
Configuration-Driven Simplicity Makes It a Breeze
What do you like best about the product?
The product is primarily configuration-driven, which makes it straightforward and user-friendly.
What do you dislike about the product?
There isn't anything that comes to mind that I dislike.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use it in front of our monolith clusters to route traffic between canary VMs and production VMs.
Exceptional Scaling, Confguration, and Reliability
What do you like best about the product?
Scaling and configuration and reliability
What do you dislike about the product?
Haproxy is pretty optiomized. I dont dislike anything.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Load balancing and routing
Supports flexible traffic routing and handles high request volumes with minimal overhead
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for HAProxy is as the Ingress controller for all my workloads sitting in Kubernetes, where anything entering from the public internet has to hit HAProxy first. HAProxy makes the weighted routing for blue-green deployments and also some sort of request and header-based routing to different environments and different applications or microservices in the Kubernetes clusters.
I used HAProxy mostly with the initial 1.5 or 1.6 Kubernetes clusters where it was the only solution compatible with NGINX, which I used for Kubernetes workloads and also for the monolithic architecture where the traffic comes from the external world, and we want to have a similar kind of configuration with a load balancer in place. I use the same HAProxy open source for on-premises to maintain similar toolsets, one from the commercial variant for the cloud and one for the on-premises variant.
A unique use case I would highlight is that initially, most API gateways or reverse proxies did not support all the functionalities we expect from an API gateway. For example, we needed rate limiting functionality not just on IP addresses but on a mix of multiple headers and content manipulations. I used HAProxy for rate limiting and integrated it with ModSecurity, our homegrown tool from open source, which we wanted to inline with HAProxy. Eventually, HAProxy introduced WAF functionality for web application filtering, where we configured certain rules for acceptance and content enrichment, ensuring that X-Forwarded-For requests were sent to downstream applications for visibility and effective issue triage. We wrote some plugins for HAProxy and received significant help from the HAProxy team to empower our WAF use cases over time.
What is most valuable?
In my experience, the best feature of HAProxy is its load balancing capabilities, as it provides various algorithms, stickiness, and configurations. I have extensively used HAProxy along with NGINX over the years and found its load balancing feature to stand out. Configuration management is easy once you are familiar with deploying it, but it is not flexible enough to allow complete configuration from the UI. I have not used HAProxy in the last three to four years, but previously, its UI perspective was lacking, requiring manual adjustments. Though configuration management is not a primary focus, load balancing definitely stands out in terms of feature set. Flexibility-wise, we centralized multiple environments with a single HAProxy deployment, and its ability to handle billions of events amazed me. However, while security features have replaced WAF functionality, they are limited for smaller organizations that do not need dedicated load balancers or WAF capabilities. Built-in capabilities provide a core advantage from a cost perspective, especially for those starting out, and I recommend exploring Terraform or Ansible for configuration management, though it is still in an outdated style.
HAProxy positively impacted our organization by exceeding scalability expectations, initially projected at 200k requests but ultimately handling over 15 million transactions per second without any issues. We assume it can handle beyond 1 billion transactions per second since we encountered no performance hiccups. In terms of reliability, we have not experienced significant issues, though reliability concerns can arise during configuration management reloads. Cost savings are notable for startups needing minimal feature sets across WAF, API gateway, and load balancer functions, making HAProxy a cost-effective foundational tool that can save more than $100k per year for users.
What needs improvement?
One needed feature for HAProxy is a more robust API Gateway, which still has limitations despite many validations for Kubernetes, especially around ease of use and persona-based designs for different user roles. The existing functionalities around load balancing do not focus enough on security or configuration management aspects. The reloading functionality is effective as it allows soft reloads without interrupting traffic patterns, but configuration management should improve significantly, especially concerning UI and GitOps principles for easier management. While RBAC is implemented, it is not sufficiently granular for controlling access privileges, which should improve over time for managing distinct features.
A significant area for improvement in HAProxy is its tenancy model; managing multiple environments can be challenging, especially with mergers, acquisitions, or domain changes. It lacks centralized management capabilities for uniform configuration templates across regions. The tool should allow smooth version transitions and facilitate zero-touch deployments to streamline operations.
Enhancements in tooling and integration with technologies like eBPF are crucial for HAProxy. The customer support aspect also requires improvement, as their SLA responses are often not immediate enough for users who depend on HAProxy as a primary tool. Documentation can be better, particularly regarding configuration templates and best practices that fit diverse requirements.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HAProxy for almost four to five years during my career at Arista Networks and some portion at the Zeta as well, especially for the Kubernetes workload deployments from the marketplace.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
HAProxy is generally stable in my experience, though issues can arise during configuration management when changes are necessary.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
For scalability, HAProxy meets my needs, supporting our initial horizontal scaling and then adapting to vertical scaling in a VMware environment, utilizing Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) for Kubernetes and Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA) for the VM deployments.
How are customer service and support?
My interactions with HAProxy's customer support were limited, but the feedback from my team indicated satisfactory service; however, SLAs were longer than our expectations.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before HAProxy, I initially used NGINX and switched due to scaling and reliability needs, finding HAProxy more maintainable and user-friendly with better documentation.
How was the initial setup?
We purchased HAProxy via the AWS Marketplace, deploying it with our own methods using the provided Helm charts.
What was our ROI?
I estimate seeing a return on investment with HAProxy, as it significantly reduced staff requirements and enhanced scaling capabilities, particularly when transitioning from NGINX, which faced issues. Although HAProxy simplified the transition to Kubernetes, operational differences remained minimal over time.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with HAProxy's pricing was positive, though I do not remember the exact figures as it was a few years ago. The pricing remains competitive compared to other vendors, and the service is somewhat aligned with recent tooling developments, although pricing structures may require re-evaluation for future offerings.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I considered NGINX during my selection process and also looked into Kong, which I find to be a robust API gateway with better functionality alongside Envoy.
What other advice do I have?
We measured transaction rates and cost savings by comparing alternatives like dedicated tools for WAF, such as Cloudflare WAF or AWS WAF, noting their costs and estimating a 30% to 40% saving. We evaluated metrics with Prometheus, analyzed through Grafana, and created custom metrics that confirmed our handling of requests without any performance issues during our scale-up period. Cost-wise, we determined HAProxy was a tool that could replace WAF, load balancer, and reverse proxy capabilities in a unified solution.
I would rate HAProxy an eight out of ten because of concerns around configuration management, the need for better management of multiple environments, a single source of truth, UI enhancements, and the potential for more frequent updates and support. Once these areas are improved, HAProxy could easily become a nine or ten out of ten.
My advice to new users is to pre-plan their intended feature use, clearly define limitations, and understand compatibility to avoid scalability issues. It is also crucial to benchmark in real-time environments. Overall, HAProxy is a great product; thorough evaluation is important to ensure that it meets user expectations before fully committing.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
