HAProxy Reviews

The solution is used for high availability. We use it for the backend to distribute the load.

We needed a simple proxy system that is open source. HAProxy was the most used tool for any issues that we ran into. We did not want to use something that was not used much so that we could fix the issues that came up.

The solution is effective in managing our traffic. The integrations work fine. It's a load balancer. There's no need for complex integration. We hit it, and it balances the load in the servers that we assigned to it.

The product has the basic foundations of any load-balancing product. It is simple and basic. The product does not have any new technologies.

I have been using the solution for a few years.

The tool seems very stable. I have not heard of the infrastructure team having any issues with it.

The tool is scalable. We have everything we need.

The product is open source.

There are better tools, but the product does the job well. All my colleagues know the tool and have used it. I recommend the product to others. Companies that have complex environments must not choose HAProxy. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use the open source version in our dev environments, and the commercial product for production and pre-production. Our primary use case is for reverse proxy, especially for switches in the different environments. I am a system engineer. 

The solution is user-friendly, works quickly and efficiently. 

I'd like to see better documentation and preferably a French version as well. The product is used a lot here and that would be helpful.

I've been using this solution for a year. 

In my previous job we had some stability issues related to configuration and compatibility with other products. It was unstable because of cookie problems. 

We have good scalability. 

The initial setup takes a few minutes. We use Terraform to deploy and it's very fast. We have five users in the company. 

I had a look at Nginx for the reverse proxy part but I preferred the typology of the writing of HAProxy.

It's important to define your use case clearly so you can be sure the product corresponds to your needs.

I rate the solution seven out of 10. 

Our primary use for this solution is to mount service for Redis.

It made something possible where I do load balancing on a container, without having to configure it at the firewall.

The most valuable feature is the TCP load balancing. It solves a problem for me where I can build files, not based on the health of the check, but rather the speed of the check. I found that functionality to be quite useful.

The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic. Additional logging functionality with better documentation would be helpful.

I'm quite happy with the frequency in which new versions and updates come out. Each release either adds some functionality or fixes some bugs, from what I've seen. I've upgraded the HAProxy probably ten times now, and have never had an issue.

I have never had to use the solution's technical support.

I found that the setup was pretty straightforward, although I had read a book on HAProxy before I started the project. I had given it some thought in terms of what it was that I wanted to do. The book that I read was good, and it was easy for me to install the product.

Only one person is required for deployment and maintenance.

We are not paying for HAProxy support. We're using the free version, compiling it in a container, and using it. The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial. 

I chose this solution because I have to operate within a Docker container, and this is the only one that I could get to work.

Once the container is set up, the time it takes to deploy is typically under a minute. That is a full-blown solution with all the plugins and images that I'm planning on using. I'm pretty happy with it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I have found HAProxy's flexibility to be most valuable. HAProxy is highly customizable and will meet the business demands of most companies. It comes with plenty of load balancing algorithms and can act as a forward and reverse proxy.

HAProxy has assisted us with bringing legacy systems in compliance with third party security requirements.

The documentation is extremely detailed, but I think it could be restructured so it isn't so daunting for beginners.

We have been using HAProxy in production for four months.

None, so far.

None, so far.

None, so far.

The customer service is great. I haven't had to open many service requests, but for the few I have opened, support has always responded quickly.

Out of 1-10, a definite 10.

We currently use F5 load balancers for our environment and we hope to switch to HAProxy in the very near future.

Configuring our forward proxy was a little complex because it was my first time implementing such a solution. That being said, the people at HAProxy were more than willing to help me get the solution in place.

Not applicable.

Undetermined at this time.

Compared to solutions such as F5, Haproxy is much cheaper upfront and in yearly licensing fees.

We looked at NGINX and Squid.

We are just using this product in our UAT environment.

Load balancing is valuable, and we are also using the WAF feature.

It is a complete open-source product. The good thing is that there is a lot of customization and development.

There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment.

When you have to customize it for your application requirements, there are a lot of challenges. There should be more support for customization. To customize it better, there should be some kind of programming integration.

I have been using this solution for two and a half years.

It is completely open-source, so updates come very frequently. To the most extent, it is stable.

It is an open-source product, so you have to work on technical support. You can take premium support from HAProxy, and that helps a lot, but it is not comparable to other enterprise products because it is a free-of-cost product.

I also use F5. I am looking to replace F5 with HAProxy for some of my non-critical applications.

HAProxy is open source. So, if you have cost concerns, you can go for it. It is good for basic application load balancing. If you don't have budget limitations or you have critical applications, you should definitely go for F5 because of the standardization and the product experience they have in handling mission-critical applications. 

Its initial setup is easy and not very complex. If you have a general understanding of how containers and VMware work, it is not very problematic to deploy it.

The initial setup documentation of HAProxy is good, but when you have to customize it for your application requirements, it gets difficult.

It is free of cost.

We have currently deployed it for one product. For non-critical applications, it is a good choice. You can definitely go for it if you have cost concerns, your application is not very dynamic, or you are looking for a basic load balancing product. 

I would rate HAProxy a six out of 10.

Load-balancing between hosting sites, using Level 4 and Level 7 (with proxy-protocol, depending on the requirements).

It makes the hosting on multiple platforms/datacenters very easy, without having to worry about the high availability required by our customers.

The anti-DDOS PacketShield filtering solution (embedded in the physical appliances) as well as the BGP route injection are great features and heavily used.

The firmware upgrades are extremely easy, fast and convenient. You only have to upload it and reboot. It is as fast and easy to roll back to the previous version.

These features are really an advantage over a "homemade" solution.

The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup. The clustering is mainly a configuration replication and is great in a case of active-passive usage. In the case of an active-active (or with more than two nodes) where the configuration is not fully identical, it cannot be used as-is.

We did encounter some stability bugs, but all were ironed out diligently by support.

No scalability issues, ever.

Excellent so far. We have always been able to deal with any problem, quickly and efficiently.

We used something else a long time ago. The old solution wasn't addressing our needs.

Straightforward, but received some help for the migration.

Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products.

Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes.

We are mainly using HAProxy Community Edition on our own servers. We also use this solution depending on our needs, but maintenance and upgrades are more complicated.

Play a lot with the VM version. The product is powerful but some features are a bit hidden (read the HAProxy docs).

The heavily tuned full stack (NIC, kernel, and user space) produces excellent performance. Their support is available for advanced troubleshooting.

We have been able to achieve extremely high performance load balancing in a short amount of time. As an example, using L4 mode, we routinely return more than 100 gigabytes per second of MySQL traffic, from a cluster of about 10 replicas.

The GUI is clunky and the on-board metric viewing solution is poor. We ship metrics off the appliance to InfluxDB (using CollectIT, which is bundled with the appliance), to view them directly with Grafana.

We have used this solution for around five years.

During our seven years with these appliances, we have found some problems, typically under very extreme conditions. In each case, the issue was quickly escalated to a team led by the CTO at Aloha.

During one of these cases, they found three separate OpenSSL bugs, and one of them was not previously reported. We also moved to using Intel NICs. Our initial batch of appliances had a different manufacturer, which struggled when pushed to the line rate.

Full layer 7 SSL termination is limited to a single core, which is a problem. We have worked around it terminating SSL on the back-ends, but this is not ideal.

Technical support is truly exceptional. The initial layer is highly technical, and can reproduce problems and provide details. Serious issues are quickly escalated to the senior R&D team.

We have moved all of our basic load balancing onto these devices. We previously used Citrix NetScalers, which were expensive, harder to configure, and more challenging to troubleshoot.

The initial setup was trivial.

Compared to the others in the market, such as Citrix and F5, the cost per performance for Aloha appliances is extremely low. In our experience, the performance and reliability is better.

We strongly prefer to go with Open Source solutions. We evaluated https://www.loadbalancer.org/ as well. We went with Aloha because of the in-house expertise that Aloha has. The primary developer of HAProxy works there.

Go for it. These systems are exceptional.

Carers ACT operates a Skype for Business based call centre, which requires the use of a load balancer and reverse proxy for HTTP traffic for the front-end pools. HAProxy is able to fulfill both of these requirements.

In addition to these basic functions outlined above, Carers ACT also requires high availability and ease of configuration. HAProxy fulfills these additional requirements through providing high availability through VRRP and configuration synchronisation.

One of the core services that Carers ACT provides carers within the ACT region is both an advisory and respite support telephone service. Carers use this service to be connected to services, access both advice and support, as well as accessing respite services to assist them in their caring role. The Carers ACT Skype for Business implementation is being progressively re-architected to remove single points of failure, of which the load balancing role was one.

Carers ACT is also exploring innovative approaches to delivering services to carers who are unable to physically attend events, such as live streaming and providing online face to face contact. These new approaches are likely to be supported by the Carers ACT Skype for Business infrastructure. The implementation of the HAProxy load balancing solution will allow Carers ACT to begin to deliver these new services.

Under a month.

No. Carers ACT deployed a pair of clustered ALOHA Load Balancers and were able to migrate from our existing load balancing solution in under a week.

No.

No. The implementation that Carers ACT undertook is focused on reliability over scalability. The throughput required is low, but reliability requirements are high.

From initial approach to the donation of licenses to Carers ACT was a short and a pleasant experience. HAProxy appear to have a solid customer service team who are able to escalate quickly and appropriately.

Carers ACT did not require technical support during our deployment.

Yes. As a non-profit charitable organisation, Carers ACT aims to reduce costs where possible to enable finances to be redirected to services for clients as far as possible. A reduction in overhead allows for an increase in value for our clients.

Carers ACT was facing a significant renewal cost for our existing load balancer solution, and approached HAProxy who generously offered a donation of this product for our use.

HAProxy is definitely a power-user tool. It is enormously scalable and flexible, but this can come at the cost of usability. For anything other than a simple topology, editing configuration files rather than using graphical tools will be required.

This, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, but rather for the scenarios that HAProxy excels, an administrator should have intimate knowledge of their environment and have undertaken appropriate planning. The ability to have very low-level access to configuration within each load balancer allows for configuration and deployments that could be limited by GUI configuration tools.

In-house.

Instant due to the donation of licensing from HAProxy.

Yes. HAProxy was chosen as it met our needs and because of the generous donation of an HA license pair by the HAProxy team.