In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configure HAProxy on your CentOS 6 server. For those of you who didn’t know, HAProxy is a free and open-source Linux application used for load balancing network traffic.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation HAProxy on a CentOS 6.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 6.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install and Configure HAproxy on CentOS 6
Step 1. First, add a yum repository to your system.
HAProxy isn’t available in the default repositories for CentOS. In order for us to be able to install it, we need to either compile it from the source (preferred) or add the EPEL repository to our server and install it using Yum.
#CentOS 6 – 32-bit rpm -Uvh http://mirror.overthewire.com.au/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm #CentOS 6 – 64-bit rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
Step 2. Install and Configure HAproxy on CentOS 6.
Now we install HAProxy using yum the command:
yum install haproxy
Step 3. Configuring HAProxy.
We have to modify the configuration file of HAProxy i.e. /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg as per our requirement. (Change this configuration to your network requirements). For more configuration details check this url.
#nano /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg global log 127.0.0.1 local0 log 127.0.0.1 local1 debug maxconn 45000 # Total Max Connections. This is dependent on ulimit user haproxy group haproxy daemon defaults timeout server 86400000 timeout connect 86400000 timeout client 86400000 timeout queue 1000s # Configuration for HTTP site listen http_idroot 192.168.2.102:80 mode http balance roundrobin # Load Balancing algorithm option httpchk option forwardfor server server1 192.168.2.100:80 weight 1 maxconn 512 check server server2 192.168.2.101:80 weight 1 maxconn 512 check # Configuration for HTTPS site listen https_idroot 192.168.2.102:443 mode tcp balance source# Load Balancing algorithm reqadd X-Forwarded-Proto:\ http server server1 192.168.2.100:443 weight 1 maxconn 512 check server server2 192.168.2.101:443 weight 1 maxconn 512 check listen stats 192.168.2.102:31337 mode http option httpclose balance roundrobin stats uri / stats realm Haproxy\ Statistics stats refresh 5s stats auth admin:passwd123
Step 4. Once you have configured HAProxy, it’s time to start the service.
service haproxy start chkconfig haproxy on
Step 5. Now you will be able to browse your application using the IP of the HAProxy server. For the HAProxy Status dashboard, you have to browse the URL: http://192.168.2.102:31337. It will ask you for the username and password. Use the username and password you defined on the configuration file as “stats auth”.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed HAProxy. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing HAProxy on CentOS 6 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official HAProxy website.
