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PeerSpot user
System Administrator at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Assists with bringing legacy systems in compliance with third party security requirements

What is most valuable?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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

What needs improvement?

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

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using HAProxy in production for four months.

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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

None, so far.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

None, so far.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

None, so far.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

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.

Technical Support:

Out of 1-10, a definite 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

Not applicable.

What was our ROI?

Undetermined at this time.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at NGINX and Squid.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Software Engineer at a non-profit with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Helps distribute the server load but has only the basic features
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is effective in managing our traffic."
  • "The product does not have any new technologies."

What is our primary use case?

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

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for a few years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The tool is scalable. We have everything we need.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The product is open source.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Buyer's Guide
HAProxy
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about HAProxy. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
AICARDO Sylvain - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engeneer at Inatum
Real User
Works quickly and efficiently; lacks sufficient documentation
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is user-friendly and efficient."
  • "Documentation could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

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. 

What is most valuable?

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

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have good scalability. 

How was the initial setup?

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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

What other advice do I have?

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. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user814488 - PeerSpot reviewer
Expert Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Makes hosting on multiple platforms / datacenters easy, without having to worry about HA
Pros and Cons
  • "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 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."

What is our primary use case?

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

How has it helped my organization?

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

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No scalability issues, ever.

How are customer service and technical support?

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

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

How was the initial setup?

Straightforward, but received some help for the migration.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
DevOps Engineer at a media company with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
VRRP redundancy is a mission-critical feature that works seamlessly for us
Pros and Cons
  • "I estimate that this product has saved our company hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in possible downtime from previous load balancers. We make a lot of our money from online sales, so it is critical to have 99.9% uptime."
  • "The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."
  • "The VRRP redundancy is also a mission-critical feature that works seamlessly. I can bring down a server live with minimal downtime because of this."
  • "HAProxy Enterprise Edition has been rock solid. We have essentially had no downtime caused by our load balancers in the last 10 months, because they’ve worked so well. Previously, our load balancers caused us multiple hours per year in downtime."
  • "The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for this solution is to perform Layer 7 load balancing/reverse proxying of both our internal and external web applications.

We also use it for SSL offloading, and are beginning to utilize the basic Web Application Firewall functionality of it. 

HAProxy also performs VRRP, for redundancy, in case one of the servers were to go down.

How has it helped my organization?

I estimate that this product has saved our company hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in possible downtime from previous load balancers. We make a lot of our money from online sales, so it is critical to have 99.9% uptime.

What is most valuable?

The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us.

The VRRP redundancy is also a mission-critical feature that works seamlessly. I can bring down a server live with minimal downtime because of this.

What needs improvement?

The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs.

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No stability issues. HAProxy Enterprise Edition has been rock solid. We have essentially had no downtime caused by our load balancers in the last 10 months, because they’ve worked so well. Previously, our load balancers caused us multiple hours per year in downtime. 

I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No scalability issues, but only because we do not deal with a lot of scale here. We simply rely on an active/passive configuration, so if a load balancer were to fail, we would have a backup instance ready to go.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support has been, in one word, perfect. Every time I call, I’m on the phone with a representative within five minutes who is highly skilled and willing to help, whether in the case of critical issues or simple advice. They always make me feel like I can pick up the phone just to have a good conversation about a new feature, a bug, a "what if" scenario, or anything else.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Coyote Point load balancers, and then switched to Fortinet’s Application Delivery Controller, due to end-of-life on the Coyote Points. After a few months of major issues involving hours of downtime and slowness, we had to make a decision to move away from Fortinet. We chose HAProxy because of the open-source community behind it, and previous experience with it. We then decided to upgrade to the Enterprise Edition for the support they offer.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. With a minimal configuration, you can get up and going quickly. However, it is very easy to modify the configuration to meet any requirements you may have, and reload in production with no downtime. The only complex part is having to maintain the base operating system, as HAProxy EE is simply a Linux package. The hardening of the operating system was done by myself since there is no appliance, like their ALOHA offering.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is well worth it. HAProxy Enterprise Edition paid for itself within months, simply due to the resiliency it brings. It was a bit more expensive than we were originally interested in paying, but we are thankful we chose to go with HAProxy.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate any other options. We considered looking at Barracuda’s offerings, but after a few days of evaluating HAProxy, we decided that it would be the best fit for us.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this product a nine out of 10. I only took off one point because of the lack of a GUI, although in this case I would say that I prefer the CLI and configuration, which is primarily how we manage it. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell.

Be sure you are familiar with the Linux command line and have networking knowledge. Specifically, VRRP is helpful to understand the high-availability aspect of it. The documentation is very helpful, so be sure to follow their given best practices and configuration tips.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
ICT Manager at a non-profit with 51-200 employees
Real User
Provides High Availability Through VRRP And Configuration Synchronisation

What is most valuable?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

Under a month.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

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.

Technical Support:

Carers ACT did not require technical support during our deployment.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

In-house.

What was our ROI?

Instant due to the donation of licensing from HAProxy.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user707175 - PeerSpot reviewer
Production Engineering at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
We have been able to achieve high performance load balancing in a short amount of time

What is most valuable?

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

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have used this solution for around five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and technical support?

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.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was trivial.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

Go for it. These systems are exceptional.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Aleksei Grishutin - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
Easy to learn but performance is quite bad

What is our primary use case?

Our company used the solution as a proxy for Tanzu during an initial installation for conducting performance tests. 

What is most valuable?

It is easy to learn proxy operations. 

What needs improvement?

The solution has bad performance issues. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I used the solution for six months. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good and passed all tests. 

How are customer service and support?

I did not need technical support. 

How was the initial setup?

The solution is easy to install and configure in terms of the load balancer. Other tools might take eight days to install, but the solution only takes three or four days.

What about the implementation team?

We installed the solution in-house using available documentation. 

Maintenance can be completed by one network administrator. Sometimes it is not easy to diagnose issues. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is open source so is free. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other options before the solution. We were not happy with the solution's performance so we switched to Load Balancing Analytics. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free HAProxy Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: October 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free HAProxy Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.