Overview of the LB Layer7 tab

The LB Layer7 tab embeds HAProxy, which is a reverse proxy for load balancing TCP and HTTP. As a reverse proxy, it terminates the client’s connection on one end, then opens a connection to the server on the other end. You enable TCP mode or HTTP mode by setting the mode directive in the configured frontend and backend sections.

• In HTTP mode, you can make routing decisions based on HTTP metadata such as the URL path, HTTP headers, and cookies. Set mode http.
• In TCP mode, you can load balance TCP traffic, over which you can transport any TCP-compatible application including HTTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, and MySQL. Set mode tcp.
• HAProxy ALOHA 17.0 and newer: Load balance UDP by adding a udp-lb configuration section.

The LB Layer7 tab supports a variety of configurable options, including:

• Load balancing schemes including round robin, least connection, source, destination, source/destination, URI, HTTP header values, and others.
• Server health checks by HTTP or TCP protocol.
• Traffic rate limiting and traffic policing.
• Rich conditional switching rules (ACLs) for traffic filtering and control.
• Rich SSL and security stack.
• Web Application Firewall (WAF).
• Rich observability support.

HAProxy is a good choice for many use cases, while the embedded LVS load balancer is good for others.

See also Jump to heading #

• HAProxy configuration tutorials
• HAProxy configuration manual