HAProxy Fusion 1.3 is now available—making it even simpler to adopt modern, scalable application delivery. New custom dashboards, high-performance Kubernetes service discovery, and optimized workflows bolster HAProxy Fusion's observability and flexibility.
New to HAProxy Fusion?
HAProxy Fusion provides full-lifecycle management, monitoring, and automation of multi-cluster, multi-cloud, and multi-team HAProxy Enterprise deployments. HAProxy Fusion combines a high-performance control plane with a modern GUI and API (with 100% coverage), enterprise administration, a comprehensive observability suite, and infrastructure integrations including AWS, Kubernetes, Consul, and Prometheus. HAProxy Fusion and HAProxy Enterprise benefit from next-generation security layers powered by threat intelligence from HAProxy Edge and enhanced by machine learning.
Together, this flexible data plane, scalable control plane, and secure edge network form HAProxy One: the world’s fastest application delivery and security platform that is the G2 category leader in API management, container networking, DDoS protection, web application firewall (WAF), and load balancing.
To learn more, contact our sales team for a demonstration.
What's new?
HAProxy Fusion 1.3 is packed with major quality-of-life improvements. For the complete list of features, please view the HAProxy Fusion 1.3 release notes (customer login required). Key additions include:
A new, customizable Security dashboard complete with bot management and WAF monitoring statistics
An enhanced Access Logs dashboard with support for creating custom views into all your observability data
More powerful service discovery integration with Kubernetes and Consul, including support for filtering based on labels (AKA "tags") for services and namespaces
Improved configuration management, including a new fast backends feature for near-instant configuration generation from service discovery registries, with minimal overhead
A more powerful and searchable Request Explorer interface with added security details
Line-by-line or by-key .map file editing, letting you make edits with high concurrency of changes
An upgraded method for sending access logs from HAProxy Enterprise to HAProxy Fusion or your syslog servers
This only scratches the surface of what HAProxy Fusion 1.3 brings to the table. We'll dive into the above features to explain how they make it even easier to use HAProxy Fusion to manage large-scale deployments.
For a deeper look at the latest features in HAProxy Fusion 1.3, register for our HAProxy Fusion 1.3: New Custom Monitoring Dashboards, Security Tools, and Improved Kubernetes Support webinar.
Ready to upgrade?
When you're ready to start the upgrade process, please carefully read our HAProxy Fusion upgrade documentation (customer login required). We've also backported multiple features to HAProxy Fusion 1.2, for teams that are unable to upgrade to the new version right away.
New Security dashboard improves observability for threat management
HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 constituted a major leap forward for multi-layered security in HAProxy, introducing the new HAProxy Enterprise WAF and HAProxy Enterprise Bot Management Module. Now, HAProxy Fusion 1.3 upgrades the monitoring capabilities for these layers to truly empower teams with the data needed for threat response. It also boosts transparency into how HAProxy Enterprise clusters operate.
HAProxy Fusion 1.3 adds a customizable Security dashboard to the Dashboards picker under "Overview." You can now view a variety of contextual information for HAProxy Enterprise WAF and HAProxy Enterprise Bot Management Module, neatly organized by pane. You can drap, drop, resize, and remove these individual dashboard sections according to your preferences. That includes creating a unified view for both security layers (example shown below), or a focused view centered solely on the metrics you care about:
HAProxy Fusion 1.3 lets you create a Security dashboard from scratch or save layout templates for later use. And for those using a custom layout, reverting to the default view takes just a few clicks. Users no longer have to dig through custom log data or stick table details, or leverage other tools to locate these useful metrics. Improved RBAC support also gives administrators granular control over who can view what.
New Access Logs dashboard brings customization and granularity
Active HAProxy Enterprise nodes track numerous performance metrics such as total requests, average requests, bandwidth in and out, and others. As its name suggests, the new Access Logs dashboard in HAProxy Fusion 1.3 can draw from your access logs—viewable in Request Explorer—to display much broader data than before. HTTP methods, IP addresses, and GeoIP metrics are just a few examples.
New tools also make it easier to view the contextual data you care about. Users can choose a date (or date range) by zooming or dragging in the chart—or by using the calendar for historical data. These controls are identical to those present within the Native Statistics dashboard since HAProxy Fusion 1.2.
To help you drill down even further, the Access Logs dashboard supports advanced data filtering by cluster, resource, backend, frontend, IP address, WAF field, and more. Each pane of the dashboard is also resizable and movable, letting you create the perfect bird’s-eye view of cluster performance and security. Users can create and share their own customized dashboards using hundreds of combinations of stats and visualization styles.
Finally, these HAProxy Enterprise statistics are now reviewable for longer periods of time. You can preserve basic metrics for months without worrying about storage requirements, as the quantity and complexity of collected stats are relatively low. HAProxy Fusion 1.3 gives you more control over your data.
Compiled stats based on access_logs will consume much more space than native statistics, since they include complete access logs. Keep this in mind while determining your storage priorities or resources available for querying and compiling dashboard contents.
Service discovery becomes more capable
HAProxy Fusion 1.2 first added service discovery for Kubernetes (K8s) and Consul environments. You can use this to automatically identify backend services (such as Kubernetes pods) and configure external routing and load balancing in your HAProxy Enterprise nodes.
HAProxy Fusion 1.3 builds on this foundation by bolstering Kubernetes infrastructure integration with new-and-improved service discovery features. You can now do the following in HAProxy Fusion 1.3:
Define which K8s services are load balanced using labels on namespaces and services. This makes HAProxy Fusion service-aware within large-scale Kubernetes environments through Kubernetes-native configuration, and only pulls in the services you want.
Use the new fast backends feature to generate configuration for a very large number of Kubernetes or Consul services, with minimal overhead.
The optional fast backends transformer is an important addition for organizations that host numerous services in Kubernetes and thus scale out frequently. We've revamped the configuration code to reduce human error and slash configuration upload time—based on service discovery information—from minutes to mere seconds.
Service discovery data can change (and become obsolete) every few seconds, so restoring earlier versions isn't very useful. However, we've maintained a reviewable historical record of previous runs for HAProxy Fusion users.
This performance benefit of fast backends is most noticeable at massive scale. HAProxy Fusion can now dynamically generate over 100,000 lines of configuration in seconds without encountering bottlenecks. Any associated backends appear as normal HAProxy Enterprise backends in your HAProxy configuration, supplied directly by Kubernetes.
You'll see this configuration populate in the newly added read-only portion of the editor. It lives alongside other sections delivered to your load balancers and available for use in configuration—such as HAProxy variables populated by HAProxy Fusion or other logging settings. While you can see all portions of your configuration in one unified view, this setup mitigates human error and helps simplify the complex task of managing Kubernetes.
Request Explorer interface displays richer data
Request Explorer has historically enabled users to retroactively view client access logs, and understand the request-response flow within HAProxy Enterprise. While these access logs provided useful request details, we've expanded this feature in HAProxy Fusion 1.3 by adding a dedicated dashboard page to help you review the following (and much more):
Top 10 request paths
Response codes
GeoIP countries
Protocols used
Since logs feed data to Request Explorer, it's also possible to search by structured data using the familiar ctrl + f keybinding. We may continue to expand upon this overall feature list in future versions of HAProxy Fusion.
A new Security tab helps you drill down deeper
Request Explorer's expanded view is a great place to centrally inspect a wide range of HAProxy Enterprise cluster operational data, which is why we've expanded it to encompass security data. Teams use HAProxy Fusion to manage multi-layered security features such as HAProxy Enterprise WAF and HAProxy Enterprise Bot Management Module, so we've compiled data from both into a dedicated tab.
HAProxy Fusion now displays a brief security summary and tells users what mitigating action was taken (if any) against a threat, based on your configuration. This section is bolstered by new sections on SSL, WAF, JavaScript challenge, and bot management—each demonstrating the intersection of client behavior and HAProxy Enterprise functionality.
Map files gain flexibility with fewer reloads
Many HAProxy Enterprise users use .map files to define key-value pairs, enabling features such as dynamic rate limiting and blue-green deployments. They also support Layer 7 routing and many other creative functions. However, the process of updating those files hasn't been very user-friendly.
For example, .map files previously allowed for conflicting changes. HAProxy Fusion also required a complete file re-upload to apply miniscule edits. This was resource-intensive and error-prone for customers with massive files.
HAProxy Fusion 1.3 brings some important enhancements to boost .map file usability:
Line-by-line and by-key editing are now supported through additional specialized API endpoints.
Changes to
.mapfiles submitted to HAProxy Fusion through the new editing API endpoints are applied to your HAProxy Enterprise nodes dynamically through Runtime API. These changes skip HAProxy reloads, yet your file is still uploaded to the filesystem for persistence.After users edit them, HAProxy Fusion can send multiple independent
.mapfiles to your load balancers in one transaction, with built-in error handling and reduced latency while applying multiple.mapfile changes.
HAProxy Fusion is a central hub for teams, so we also wanted to make .map file editing more collaborative. You can now concurrently edit and merge changes, using several policies that govern mergers and conflict resolution. Additional controls are in place to enable smarter sending of updated files without overwhelming the system. Synchronicity between HAProxy Fusion users keeps everyone on the same page and displays the same file contents to all users, protecting against accidental deletion or duplication.
If you want to track the file changes you've made, a new real-time changelog appears in the upper right (pictured above). HAProxy Fusion users can also use the API to make and apply .map file changes.
Conclusion
HAProxy Fusion 1.3 represents a mighty leap forward for HAProxy Fusion. New monitoring dashboards, high-performance service discovery, and .map file editing changes bring numerous usability improvements for HAProxy Fusion users.
If you want to see HAProxy Fusion 1.3 in action, contact our sales team for a demonstration or watch our introductory webinar.
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